“We want to manufacture and deploy more than 5000 fast DC chargers this year. We have a mandate for that and we are raising a round of fresh funds,” Akshit Bansal, Co-founder, Statiq, has stated.
Founded by Akshit Bansal and Raghav Arora, Statiq aims to be India’s end-to-end electric vehicle charging solutions provider. The startup claims to have won tenders from the industry heavyweights, including Hindustan Petroleum, Adani Energy, Shell Corporation, and more.
Statiq’s last round of funding was in 2019 when it raised $2.4 million. The co-founders said they had invested INR 10 lakh (Approx $ 13,100) to build prototypes of the chargers. These prototypes were then showcased to potential investors, where the last round of funding was raised.
One of the USPs of Statiq is that the company does not follow or focus on a single revenue model. It installs chargers on its own, builds, installs and maintains EV chargers for companies like HPCl, Shell and Adani, and operates an aggregated EV chargers network. Besides, it also deploys chargers at facilities of a few brands, including Tata Motors and MG Motors.
Bansal pointed out, “We had started with a focus to build electric vehicles. But we saw that a lot of startups and established brands were already doing it.”
The founders researched and established that despite many players in the EV domain, the adoption of this category was not promising. The primary reason, in their research, zoned out to be the lack of charging infrastructure, and the duo decided to venture into the field of manufacturing and deploying EV chargers. They were clear from the beginning that their products would focus on charging two, three and four-wheelers.
Bansal added, “We are trying to attack the infrastructure problem. We are trying to build the largest EV charging network in India.”
Answering Challenges With Collaborations
Claiming to build India’s largest EV charging network is a tall claim, and given the fact that India is poised to become one of the biggest EV markets in the world, the claim looks superficial too. The company observes that it takes about a year and one EV charger approach to achieve their dreams. The startup claims to have 1,000 electric car chargers and 5,000 two/three-wheeler chargers on its network. It has manufactured and deployed 300 of these car chargers, and the rest are from other brands embedded into Statiq’s network.
Statiq EV charging app, available on Google Playstore and Apple devices, shows more than 10,000 downloads and has an average rating of 4.3 stars on Playstore. The company is focusing on building India’s largest EV charging network by manufacturing and deploying EV chargers themselves and aggregating existing EV chargers onto its network.
The startup wants to manufacture and deploy 5,000 DC fast chargers this year. However, the Co-founders pointed out that they will need $ 25 million to fuel this dream, and hence the duo is out in the market talking to potential investors. The cost of building a single unit of a fast DC charger, as Bansal pointed out, is close to INR8 lakh.
Aggregation
Aggregation is the other revenue model followed by Statiq. Anybody who wants to put a charging station on the Statiq network has to pay INR 1.5/electricity unit as the ‘software fee’. So, for example, Indian Oil Corporation, willing to include its EV chargers on the Statiq App, will have to shell out INR 1.5 for every unit of electricity consumed via its chargers.
Moreover, the chargers deployed by the company at HPCL pumps will remain on its network. Different tenders, however, come with different sets of terms, conditions and revenue sharing models. The list of big names the firm is working with includes Tata Motors, MG Motors, PowerBank, Lithium, EESL, Delta, Exicom and more. Its end consumers include a person looking for a charging station and a brand like HPCL looking to source and deploy EV chargers.
“The payback period for installing a fast charger costing INR8 lakh is about 2.5 to 3 years for us. We see this going further down in the future,” noted Bansal.
Localising EV Charger Ecosystem
Unlike most of its competitors, Statiq builds EV chargers using components sourced from India. The startup pointed out that Indian vendors supply 85% of the components it uses in manufacturing EV chargers. Statiq is also open to collaborating with more India-based suppliers to fill the 15% localisation gap, the Co-founder noted.
“We are able to pass on the cost benefits of local sourcing to our B2B and B2C customers. Statiq team imports only about 15% components and hence saves a lot in import duties,” said Akshit.
The chargers are designed in house by the company and then manufactured by a contract manufacturer. The one category that the startup is looking for vendors in the country is connectors. Building a local supply chain has been of utmost importance to Bansal and Arora for the past 18 months.
“We are still figuring it out. The aim is to localise each of our products to 100%. We are already doing software inhouse, and hence that is not a challenge for us. We are able to control the customer experience because we control the entire product part including the hardware and the software,” added Bansal.
As per a report by Allied Market Research, the electric vehicle charger market was valued at $3.8 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $25.5 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 26.8% from 2020 to 2027.