Do you know that until round two years again, 90% of all of the battery administration methods—the brains of the batteries—that go into Indian electrical two- and three-wheelers had been procured from China? Ujjwal Bhardwaj, the CEO of Gurugram based mostly Electrifuel, shared this reality and extra, whereas claiming that startups like theirs are working to bridge that hole between the EV know-how expectations and provide in India.
When 4 faculty boys began to chop a second-hand Splendor motorbike to suit a BLDC motor controller, a self-assembled battery and its administration system, the by passers used to observe curiously. However why did the boys accomplish that? “To deliver the EV know-how to the plenty,” says Ujjwal Bhardwaj, one of many 4 boys and the CEO of an EV know-how startup named Electrifuel, which was born out of widespread encouragement and private dedication to revolutionising Indian electrical mobility. The startup supplies the wanted inside infrastructure for battery producers and EV OEMs and claims to cut back their market turnaround time.
“We’re constructing a whole EV know-how stack ranging from the bodily layer which may have BMS, VCU, onboard and offboard chargers, swapping station, and telematics module to the back-end SaaS infrastructure,” explains Ujjwal when questioned about their present enterprise. The 2017-born startup caters to battery producers, fleet operators, and swapping station operators. He clears that Electrifuel has not but entered into the area of parts like clusters, as they’re very ergonomically and uniquely designed for each automobile mannequin.
At present, the startup supplies 16 {hardware} choices underneath three verticals associated to BMS, telematics, and charging. Speaking about their “chemistry-agnostic” 16S Good BMS designed particularly for EVs, Ujjwal notes that it’s licensed for the most recent AIS 156 customary necessities and helps battery paralleling and sizzling swapping as nicely. Electrifuel boasts of offering customised options to battery producers, like application-optimised {hardware}, onboard information storage, firmware capabilities, and io choices which aren’t offered by different BMS choices available in the market. As per Ujjwal, their merchandise are priced within the vary of ₹1,000-8,000, relying on the variant.
Ujjwal remembers that again after they began, China was a dominating participant from the place all the availability was being sourced. “We noticed big gaps in battery and EV product high quality, functionalities, function units, and help in Indian circumstances and we entered the area to fill these a number of chasms,” he states because the founders’ motivation.
Quickly after getting in contact with battery producers, they obtained pseudo-incubated at their very own faculty campus in Bahal, utilised the lab infrastructure there to get the dangle of the tech and stack, and obtained actual traction there. Later in 2019, the startup obtained incubated at MeitY’s Electropreneur Park and grew a lot that they bought BMS and grabbed their first boot-strapped income of ₹22.5 million very quickly.
Near hitting 5,000 orders a month, the corporate goals for five-digit orders by Q1 of the subsequent monetary 12 months. It’s presently dealing with a small chunk of the NCR market and plans to develop pan-India quickly.
Having just lately raised a whopping ₹18 million in funding from the Indian Angel Community, the startup claims to commit over half of its sources to its analysis and improvement wing. As per Ujjwal, they’re evaluating a number of BMS, energy electronics and semiconductor choices from a number of sources. “We’re engaged on an automotive array of BMS choices, improved 4G LTE telematics variations, automobile management models, and scalable charger platform. We’re very speedily creating our ATM for batteries, i.e., swapping station platform that may be utilised by any swapping station operator.”
The CEO additional conveyes that Electrifuel supplies internships and brisker “nerds” are welcome within the agency. The 26-people-strong staff is seeking to scale in South America, Africa, and Asia Pacific and accomplice with EV OEMs and auto ancillaries. “We dream of getting one out of each 10 electrical two-wheelers in India with Electrifuel’s know-how in them,” Ujjwal mentioned excitedly when requested about their subsequent huge milestone.
