Announcing Our Investment In Pulse Energy

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The fuel on which the world moves is changing.

Due to a combination of several factors - from lower TCOs and higher energy efficiencies, to saving the planet from greenhouse gas emissions - the world is moving from burning polluting fossil fuels to using clean energy for moving goods and people.

As we move away from gas stations to EV charge points, a whole new can of worms is opened for various players in the space as a new ecosystem forms around this paradigm shift:

As a CPO, you worry about
- Energy - Can the grid provide enough energy? Can required loads be sanctioned?
- Location - Where do we place chargers? Is accessible real estate available at the right price points?
- Hardware - What hardware do we use? How is the compatibility with vehicles operated by our target users?
- Software - Which Charging Management System should we deploy? How to we manage, monitor, and meter our operations?
As a Fleet Operator or an Individual User, you worry about
- Discovery - How do my drivers discover charging points? Are the charging points operational? Are they available when charging is required?
- Payment - How do we pay across various charging networks? Do we need to download 10 different apps and load balances in each of them?
As a Fleet Operator, you also worry about
- Reconciliation - How is energy priced across different charging points? How do I reconcile payments with various charging networks?
And finally, as a Grid Operator, you worry about
- Demand - How are energy demand patterns changing? What impact does it have on the grid?
- Infrastructure - Can we handle new bursts of power draw from the grid? What additional infrastructure would we need to provision to cater to this demand (transformers, sub-meters, etc.)?

Listed above are just a subset of issues faced by users and operators in this fast evolving ecosystem, and that is where Pulse Energy comes in.

We first connected with Akhil in 2021 (shoutout to close friend of the fund Rahul Gupta for the introduction!), back when Pulse Energy was an app based community for the early-adopters of personal EVs in India - with charger aggregation, trip planning, and discussion boards for EV owners.

During our assessment of 20+ EV charging apps, Pulse Energy was by far the highest quality product we had come across.

However, at the time, the model was still evolving, Akhil and Devang were still trying to identify the right GTM, and while having onboarded 1200+ EV owners on their app in a relatively short time seemed very promising, there were questions around how the team would build a larger venture-scale business around it.

Over subsequent months of interactions, meetings, and brainstorming sessions, we witnessed how the team iterated rapidly to solve pain points within the EV ecosystem - eventually working with Log9 to launch InstaCharge - solving problems at scale for CPOs and Fleet Operators, as well as working as core contributors to UEI - the UPI stack for EV charging networks.

It was then we realized, that this was also the highest quality team that we had interacted with in the space.

Pulse Energy co-founders Akhil Jp (left) and Devang Mistry (right)

Their monomaniacal focus on solving the EV chicken-and-egg problem, and building great demand and supply-side hooks to bootstrap their marketplace, eventually convinced us to back Pulse Energy.

Today, Pulse Energy’s network is growing at a phenomenal rate, all with zero spends on charger capex, across a network of 14 CPOs and counting.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7129077727097229312/

Almost two years since we got talking, we are thrilled to finally partner with the Pulse Energy team, along with Peak XV Partners in their seed round.

Looking forward to their relentless execution as they shape the future of EV charging in India, and eventually across the world!

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