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Zeon Electric Pvt Ltd, which runs the electric passenger vehicle charging network across south India, is preparing to raise Series A funding and to ramp up its charging network to become a pan-India player by 2025 as the Coimbatore-headquartered company charts the next level of growth plans given the acceleration in electric vehicle adoption in the country.
The company believes that the time is ripe to embark on expansion as the EV volumes in India will only move northward. It is of the view that electric two-wheelers have already crossed the inflection point in India and will see exponential growth in the coming years.
“When it comes to electric cars, the national average is about 2 per cent, but it is rapidly gaining. In most Tier 1 cities, it is already closer to 10 per cent. This means it is about to take off vertically,” KP Karthikeyan, Co-Founder & CEO, Zeon Electric told BusinessLine.
Fundraise
Zeon Electric is looking to raise Series A funding to support its growth plans and is in consultation with its investment bankers. This will be its first fund-raising programme, it did not disclose the amount. “In the next two years, we want to scale rapidly. We have proof of concept now. Also, there have been a lot of learnings along the way, and we want to use all of those learnings and scale up as quickly as possible,” he says.
The company has so far invested about ₹15 crore in the business.
The Zeon Charging network comprises 139 chargers across 90-odd locations across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. About 7,800 km of highways in the South have been covered by the company’s high-powered chargers.
Expansion plans
The company plans to expand its charging network to northern and western India in the next two years. “Our objective is to go pan India with 1,500 chargers across 500 locations by 2025,” says Karthikeyan.
He says the company’s key focus is to build the most reliable charge point network. “Reliability can be achieved only if we deploy world-class equipment and infrastructure, even though they tend to be very expensive. So we deploy the same chargers that have been deployed by operators such as Fastened, Electrify America, Ionity, and GridServ in Europe and the US,” he states.
The company partners with commercial properties that have amenities that are frequently visited by EV owners. It pays fixed rentals for these properties. It chooses type of chargers (AC or DC) depending on the location — en route or destination.
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