MyPetrolPump

Overview

MyPetrolPump (legal entity: ANB Fuels Pvt. Ltd.) was a Bengaluru-based on-demand fuel delivery startup founded in 2016 by Ashish Gupta and Naveen/Nabin Roy. The company built proprietary refuelling trucks and delivered diesel — and later petrol — directly to B2B customers including fleet operators, apartment complexes, schools, and diesel generator owners. It operated in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune, and was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch before raising a $1.6M seed round.

MyPetrolPump failed because it was chronically under-capitalised relative to the capital intensity and regulatory complexity of the Indian fuel delivery market. The company needed large amounts of capital to expand its proprietary vehicle fleet, but regulatory uncertainty — including an early shutdown by PESO and a years-long absence of formal licensing — made investors reluctant to commit the funds required to reach defensible scale.

FuelBuddy (Treis Solutions LLP) acquired MyPetrolPump on May 9, 2021, for undisclosed cash and stock consideration. The brand was dissolved post-acquisition. Founder Ashish Gupta subsequently moved to a role as Entrepreneur in Residence at Pioneer Fund — a soft landing, not a triumphant exit. The acquisition confirmed the market was real; it also confirmed that MyPetrolPump lacked the capital and regulatory standing to win it alone.

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Founding Story

Ashish Gupta spent nine years at Royal Dutch Shell, working as a reservoir engineer in postings that included Gabon and China. The founding insight did not come from a whiteboard exercise — it came from lived experience. While stationed on a remote island off the West Coast of Africa, Gupta observed that people had to drive 25 kilometres and queue for hours simply to refuel. ^[1] The friction was not a technology problem. It was a logistics problem — one that Gupta believed was equally present, if less visibly dramatic, in India's dense urban B2B context.

Gupta quit Shell in April 2016 and returned to India. Rather than immediately building, he spent three months researching petrol stations, fuel supply chains, and the regulatory architecture of the Indian oil and gas sector. ^[2] This research phase was consequential: it gave him a realistic picture of the regulatory surface area he would need to navigate, even if the full complexity of that surface area would only become apparent after launch.

His co-founder, Naveen Roy (referred to as Nabin Roy in some sources, including the YC company page — a discrepancy that remains unresolved), brought technical depth from prior stints at Infosys and L&T. ^[3] The two founders each invested Rs 1 crore to start the company, establishing a total founder capital base of Rs 2 crore — meaningful conviction, but a tight ceiling for a business that would require proprietary hardware, regulatory navigation, and multi-city operations. ^[3]

The founding year is contested. Most press sources cite 2016; the Y Combinator company page lists 2017 and names Nabin Roy as the sole founder. ^[4] The most plausible reconciliation is that 2016 reflects incorporation and ideation, while 2017 reflects commercial launch — but the discrepancy is unresolved and may reflect data entry inconsistencies rather than a substantive dispute.