Kazam, India’s first intelligent IoT based charging station, has raised Rs 7 crore in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures, one of the largest angel investment platforms in India.
The funds raised will be used for product development, ramping up sales, operations and marketing, as Kazam continues to provide electric vehicle (EV) charging stations made in India, and has set up over 30 charging stations in 5 states – Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi/NCR, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
In a short span of 5 months, Kazam has built the hardware & software tech for affordable and smart EV charging infrastructure. It has also built an open architecture to help other charging hardware manufacturers to use their protocols and APIs. Businesses can easily connect with the APIs to start their EV journeys.
Akshay Shekhar, Co-Founder, Kazam says, “Our partnership with one of the leading EV fleet operators has already taken a good shape where we are seeing very high transaction rates on our station. We expect to put 10,000 charging stations in 2021-22 and build a robust team to support it. Even with the 2nd wave of Covid hitting our way, IPV and our other investors have stayed resilient and continue to believe in our vision to make electric mobility accessible to all.”
The EV market has a large unaddressed need for charging infrastructure for all vehicles (2W/3W/4W), in both personal and commercial applications. Kazam aspires to be the most innovative, and consumer obsessed product company through a network of charging stations enabled with IoT device for connectivity, analytics, BMS and ability to meter and bill users through a simple app.
“In the last 5 years, the government has announced multiple beneficial initiatives to increase the sales of EV vehicles. Many startups in electric mobility are scaling well and we have invested in quite a few. Thus, Kazam fits in organically as we believe with more electric mobility startups getting launched and scaled, the infrastructure and discovery needs (specially charging the vehicles) will be critical in the overall success of this sector. Kazam’s strong founding team has in-depth understanding of technology and physical infrastructure needed to help the sector grow faster and this encouraged us to invest in the company,” said Vinay Bansal, founder and CEO, Inflection Point Ventures.
According to a report by India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA), the EV market in India is projected to cross over 6.3 million units per year by 2027. The rise in the number of electric vehicles on the road would have a positive effect on cutting down India’s carbon emissions and will also help Kazam scale up at an accelerated rate.
In 2019-20, India’s EV sales totalled 380,000 units, with the EV battery demand totalling 5.4GWh. Last fiscal year, electric two-wheelers were the most common in the entire segment and the sale of high-speed electric two-wheelers is expected to increase rapidly in 2020 as more companies obtain FAME-II certification. The Indian government is eager to improve EV infrastructure and the environment. Various national and state-level policies are currently being developed and implemented. The charging infrastructure specifications are being developed and enforced across the country, from the Bharat EV policy to state-by-state EV policies and Kazam is rightly poised to leverage this momentum and roll out their services to key markets in India.
Source: Business-Standard