Chara, a deep-tech company based in Bangalore, has acquired $4.75 million in a pre-Series A financing round facilitated by Exfinity Venture Partners. This Bengaluru-based VC firm is known for its B2B-focused approach and deep-tech knowledge. The game also included involvement from the Vietnamese-based Big Capital, the venture division of Bitexco, along with Log9 Materials. Kalaari Capital and ciie. Co, who are current investors, were also part of the round.
“We’re working towards turning the current motor tech on its head, doing away with inefficient and rare-earth-dependent practices. We are building rare-earth-free, hyper-efficient, cost-effective, intelligent motors and controllers for EV, HVAC, and other industries. We are very excited to work with Exfinity, BigCapital, Log9, Kalaari, and CIIE to bring cutting-edge technology to OEMs in India and the future to the world,” said Bhakta Keshavachar, the founder and CEO of Chara Technologies.
Chara has developed motors for the 2-wheeler, 3- and 4-wheeler LCVs, and the HVAC cases. The engines and the matching controllers are currently being tested in the field and will go into production later in the year. The current range of machines offered by Chara starts with fractional kW and goes up to 10’s of Kilowatt and voltages ranging from 48V to 400V. Powers and voltages of higher energy are planned for the coming years. Chara has filed patents on controller design, motor design, and control algorithms for these motor technologies, which the business claims as a statement.
“To build SRM/Hybrid version of SRM motors, an interdisciplinary team with backgrounds in electro-mechanical, power electronics and software domains is a must. We found that the Chara founding team is exemplary in this regard. Exfinity strongly believes that the EV story for South Asia and similar markets has to be contextualized and not replicated from the US and European markets. After our earlier investment in Log 9 Materials, Chara is part of our continued belief in this thesis,” stated Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner at Exfinity.
In November 2019, Chara was founded with Bhaktha Keshavachar, Ravi Prasad Sharma, and Mahalingam Koushik. Chara develops a large-scale, cloud-controlled, rare earth-free platform for creating, building electric motors, and deploying them for HVAC, EV, and other applications.
