EV charging station startup Kazam plans to expand beyond India, where it already has a large market share, into Southeast Asia in an effort to gain first-mover advantage, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup has offices in Delhi and Pune, city managers in 4,000 postcodes across India, and plans to debut in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
The expansion is part of the roadmap Kazam has set out after closing a new $8 million Series A3 funding round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. In an interview, Akshay Shekhar, co-founder and CEO of Kazam, said the startup also plans to penetrate deeper into the South Asian country by setting up bases in new cities and building fast chargers specifically for electric two- and three-wheelers, a segment that currently dominates the entire EV market in the country.
Initially, Kazam plans to enter the Southeast Asian market through existing customers. The startup has already partnered with India's Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas), the Malaysian government-owned energy group that will help Kazam expand in its home country. Similarly, the startup is in talks with automakers to expand into Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia and even African markets, including Kenya and Uganda, the co-founders told TechCrunch.
The all-self-financed round also saw participation from Kazam's existing investors Avaana Capital and Alteria Capital, bringing the startup to $13 million in funding to date.
The startup, which has about 160 employees, plans to hire product and development experts to ramp up fast charger development and expand interoperability in the market. Currently, the company does in-house research and development of its solutions and designs its charger PCBs on its own. However, the startup outsources hardware manufacturing to keep capital expenditures down.
Kazam's biography
During the COVID lockdown in 2020, Shekhar and co-founder Vaibhav Tyagi (CTO) realised the lack of charging infrastructure in India. The duo, who also run a successful YouTube channel reviewing EVs, initially focused on two- and three-wheelers. After launching in April 2021, the startup onboarded fleet companies with its EV charging hardware and software.
“The biggest problem for fleet operators was making sure all their vehicles were charged by the next morning. Sudden power outages, drivers not being able to use the chargers properly, and concerns about reliability of drivers and vehicles were all major challenges for them,” Shekhar told TechCrunch. “So we solved all this and Kazam became a rapid success.”
Soon after successfully striking deals with fleet operators, Kazam has attracted logistics companies, e-commerce firms and automakers to its electric charging solutions. The startup has developed EV chargers for a range of vehicles and software that provides telemetry and insights on available charging points and connections through a dashboard and payment support.
Kazam's hardware and software solutions are used by India's top seven or eight automakers, two of the largest oil and gas companies and around 30 fleet companies, executives said. The startup has more than 25,000 charging points, accommodating 15 million kilometres per month and 2.5 million charge cycles per year.
Image credit: Kazam
Inspired by US EV charging network provider ChargePoint, the startup has on board major players like e-commerce platforms such as BigBasket and Flipkart, automakers like Ather Energy, Bajaj, Hero MotoCorp and TVS, and logistics providers Let's Transport and Mahindra Logistics.
Some of these companies are specifically using Kazam's charging management software, while a few are using its charging stations. The startup is white-labeling its hardware for some manufacturers to sell under their own brand. Through both its own-brand and white-label chargers, Kazam claims to have captured 75% to 80% of the total three-wheeler EV charging market in India and 40% share of the electric two-wheeler charging market.
Kazam has worked closely with the Indian government to adopt IS17017 as the charging standard for light electric vehicles in the country. Additionally, the company is working with several automakers to introduce interoperable fast-charging technologies that can charge a car in 15-20 minutes.
“We want to start digitizing right from the grid, and because we are already working with automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), it has become very easy to integrate that part into the platform,” Shekhar said.
Last month, Google named Kazam one of the EV charging network providers that will surface two-wheeler charging points in India on Google Maps. This is an extension of a feature launched in the US over five years ago, but the Indian version is the first to offer EV charging stations for two-wheelers. Additionally, the startup joined open energy network Unified Energy Interface in April along with 19 others to provide interoperable EV charging.
Kazam recorded $3.2 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in July and expects to reach $4.5 million to $5 million in ARR by the end of the year, and is also targeting to be EBITDA positive in the near future, Shekhar said.
