Posted by Chennai: IIT Madras-incubated smart EV charger startup Plugzmart raised Rs.3.63 crore in seed funding, led by early-stage VC BlueHill Capital and followed by other investors namely Meera Reddy of SKCL, Kartik Meyyappan, L. Ramkumar, Sivadas Raghava and Shailaja Reddy.
The startup plans to utilise the raised funds for R&D and scaling up the team besides ramping up production to meet the large order pipeline already in hand. It is targeting to deliver at least one million indigenously-designed and manufactured chargers in the next three years.
Plugzmart is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of electric vehicle chargers and a SaaS provider of electric charging infrastructure. Incubated at IIT Madras in 2019, Plugzmart has built its own IoT-enabled smart EV charging management system to integrate and communicate efficiently with chargers. Its portfolio of nine products includes chargers for two, three and four-wheelers.
Founded by Vivek Samaynathan and Ragavendra Ravichandran, the smart EV charger startup Plugzmart has a portfolio of nine products across AC/DC and different power ranges including AC chargers (7.4kW – 22kW) and DC chargers (30kW – 120kW).
“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 and 4 wheelers and charge point operators is going to scale rapidly. With this round of funding we are well positioned to fulfil this demand,” said Ragavendra Ravichandran, Co-founder of Plugzmart.
The unique aspects of Plugzmart-developed chargers 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 resources 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 changes.
“As the EV segment in India takes off, we are excited to partner with and invest in Plugzmart, and add to our EV portfolio. There is a gaping hole in the Made-in-India, safe and quality EV charger hardware+software market which we believe can be addressed by Plugzmart. Plugzmart is an exciting startup in the greenfield industry and we are glad to back the team to achieve new heights,” said Manu Iyer, Partner – Bluehill Capital.
The key factors that differentiate Plugzmart from current technologies include
- Indigenously designed and manufactured EV charge controller
- Connected to Cloud 24 X 7 and can be accessed through a mobile application
- Collect data from the vehicle to analyse the performance of the battery and its charging cycle
- Collect data about the energy demand and effectively balance the load
- Controller can be compatible with any type of charger