Most founders spend to acquire customers, but Kazam built an EV charging business where customers pay upfront and the cost of acquisition turns positive. Akshay Shekhar breaks down the India EV charging infrastructure playbook, from a broken first prototype to 250,000 charge points and a shot at the country's next open digital network for energy.

What makes this story unusual is where it started, a Hindi and English YouTube channel reviewing early EVs, which the founder of Kazam used as cheap market research before building any hardware. Akshay Shekhar, a second-time founder who passed through PepsiCo and Godrej after a failed IKEA-style furniture venture, now runs a device-agnostic platform that helps fleets, OEMs and utilities install, manage and monetize EV charging.

In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, he explains why he calls hardware a distribution wedge rather than the business, how load-balancing software cut fleet vehicles left uncharged overnight from 40 percent to under 10 percent, and why India wastes double-digit percentages of power at night that smart charging can absorb. With revenue up 4X to 6 million dollars and the India Energy Stack taking shape, the timing on peer-to-peer energy trading makes this a sharp read on where EV charging is headed.

👉How Kazam turned a YouTube channel and one Facebook ad into 20,000 leads and 1,500 paying charging hosts

👉Why Akshay Shekhar runs a positive CAC model where customers pay for hardware instead of the company spending to acquire them

👉What the Pine Labs playbook of hardware, SaaS and transaction fees looks like applied to EV charging infrastructure

👉How Kazam cut fleet vehicles left uncharged overnight from 40 percent to under 10 percent with load-balancing software, winning clients like BigBasket

👉Why peer-to-peer energy trading and the Unified Energy Interface could become the UPI moment for electricity in India

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00:00 - The Gateway For New Energy Explained

02:29 - Building The Petrol Pump For EVs

06:00 - YouTube Channel As Market Research

08:59 - One Ad, 20,000 Charging Leads

10:32 - The Broken Prototype First Order

12:31 - Type 6 vs Type 7 Charging

22:16 - Load Balancing EV Fleet Charging

30:02 - Peer To Peer Energy Trading

41:12 - Why Kazam Isn't A Hardware Company

48:41 - Vehicle To Grid Battery Arbitrage

58:15 - Founder Lessons From A Failure

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Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel