Chennai: IIT Madras-incubated Smart EV Charger start-up Plugzmart has raised Rs. 3.63 Crore through seed funding, led by early-stage VC BlueHill Capital and followed by investors such as Mr. Meera Reddy of SKCL, Mr. Kartik Meyyappan, Mr. L. Ramkumar, Mr. Sivadas Raghava and Mrs. Shailaja Reddy.
The company plans to use the funds for Research & Development, and scaling up the team besides ramping up production to meet the large order pipeline already in hand. The start-up plans to deliver at least one million indigenously-designed and manufactured chargers in the next three years. Fundraising will help the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) ramp up production of indigenously-manufactured units to deliver One Million Charging Ports by 2025 to make commuting more accessible & reduce import dependency in EV Sector.
Elaborating on how the fundraising will boost their operations, Mr. Ragavendra Ravichandran, Co-founder of Plugzmart, said, “A majority of EV chargers in India today are being imported and are of low quality. As EV adoption increases both on the consumer and commercial sides, the requirement for chargers from manufacturers of 2, 3 & 4 Wheelers and Charge Point Operators is going to scale rapidly and with this round of funding we are well positioned to fulfil this demand.”
The unique aspects of smart chargers developed by Plugzmart include a software-based EV charging system designed to meet the growing demand in the charging infrastructure in India. An algorithm will optimally schedule charging in order to maximize the usage of available grid resource for charging EVs and thereby maximizing the number of EVs that can be connected to the grid while enhancing grid stability. This homegrown smart controller can be used in third party chargers as well. Because of this flexibility, the system can grow and change as technology change.