(L-R) Kazam Co-Founders Vaibhav Tyagi (CPO) and Akshay Shekhar (CEO)
When your electric vehicle (EV) is running out of battery, you should either find a nearby charging station installed by a utility company or go back home to recharge it. Either of these options is impractical in a country like India, where the EV sector is still nascent and charging stations are rare.
Two Indian entrepreneurs are addressing this problem by building an affordable EV charging network, starting with Bengaluru.
Kazam, founded in 2021 by Akshay Shekhar and Vaibhav Tyagi, offers an agnostic EV charging platform. It allows EV fleets, charging point operators (CPOs), charging equipment makers/original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and other commercial properties like workplaces and resident welfare associations (RWAs) to set up their own charging networks without any software development hassle and earn money.
The startup has so far created a charging network with over 7,000 devices on its platform.
Also Read: How SWAP Energy aims to promote EV use in Indonesia through the advantages of battery-swapping
“Think of us like an Android OS, which connects you to the internet so you can build and consume many apps. We do that for the EV ecosystem,” says Shekhar.
Kazam has different offerings for different stakeholders of the EV ecosystem:
- For Vehicle OEMs
The startup offers a single API for OEMs to connect all CPOs to the vehicle dashboard, allowing them to reduce range anxiety for their drivers. This enables drivers to discover nearby charging points, recharge, and pay. Users can also book their slots in advance to get priority recharging.
“Our API sits inside the vehicle dashboard for drivers/users to find the nearby charging stations. The mobile app, on the other hand, allows drivers/users to control and monitor the charging. It means even if you are on the 10th floor of your apartment building, you can still monitor and stop charging from your sofa,” explains Shekhar.
The startup works with six top vehicle OEMs, including TVS, Ather, Mahindra, and Bajaj.
- For CPOs
Kazam connects multi-brand, multi-architecture charging stations, swapping stations into a single digital platform to control, monitor and analyse performance and revenue.
- For fleets and e-commerce firms
Kazam is creating a unified layer which connects chargers and vehicles in a single platform. This will allow enterprises to make better decisions on utilisation, schedule, and visibility on the entire transaction of fuelling your vehicle. In addition, it gives the fleet consumers options to do geo-fencing, manage maintenance and understand the total cost of ownership.
A Kazam charging point
Drivers/users pay only for energy consumption using multiple payment options (credit cards, net banking, UPI, and wallets).
At the same time, enterprises pay Kazam a fee for driving demand to the charging station. It also charges fixed fees per charger for the SaaS platform offered to enterprises.
The company works with top e-commerce players like Bigbasket and Flipkart (Walmart Group), besides large OMCs like Petronas in Malaysia and Hindustan Petroleum in India. “All these partners are either retailers or captive consumers of energy and help us reach scale with their available touchpoints. The touchpoints could be distribution warehouses, depots, Petrol bunks or even housing societies,” Tyagi reveals.
Currently, Kazam operates in India. Its next plan is to embark on its ASEAN market expansion, starting with Malaysia, where it has already secured partners.
Kazam, one of the 25 startups from the Asia Pacific graduating from the PETRONAS FutureTech 3.0 accelerator programme, raised US$3.6 million in an investment round led by Avaana Climate Fund in May this year. It is now in the market for growth capital to scale alongside its enterprise customers.
“Our vision is to be the leader in EV charging in India and beyond, leveraging our capabilities in software and hardware,” Shekhar concludes.
—
Image Credit: Kazam.
The post Kazam has created an Operating System for the EV industry in India appeared first on e27.