According to sector experts, the issue goes beyond manufacturing — it's about placement, speed, and accessibility of EV chargers.
29 Jul 2025 | 16998 Views | By Yukta Mudgal, Kiran Murali and Ketan Thakkar
Everta, a new entrant in India’s growing EV charging space with a strategic partnership with Epsilon Advanced Materials, a leading battery material solution provider, has bold plans and bigger confidence. The leadership, Benny Parihar and Manasvi Sharma, describe their new venture as a high-tech manufacturing bet poised to capture a ...
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Everta, a new entrant in India’s growing EV charging space with a strategic partnership with Epsilon Advanced Materials, a leading battery material solution provider, has bold plans and bigger confidence. The leadership, Benny Parihar and Manasvi Sharma, describe their new venture as a high-tech manufacturing bet poised to capture a significant share of the EV charging market by 2030. But can ambition and capital alone overcome the real-world hurdles that have slowed more seasoned players?
“We see massive potential in this space,” said Benny Parihar, Managing Director, Everta. “It’s not as complex as medical devices, but it’s still high-tech, and we’re applying rigorous manufacturing discipline.”
Parihar is also a board member of a healthcare company called Cryo with over 10 years of manufacturing experience in the health and wellness space. Moving from healthcare to EV charging might sound like a leap of faith, but the discipline of building global supply chains and running high-volume manufacturing plants is something Parihar brings with him.
“Processes, engineering, and manufacturing principles can be applied to any product as long as you have the right team in place,” he added.
What differentiates Everta’s foray from others is its deliberate rejection of the startup playbook. Instead of seeking rapid blitzscaling or chasing flashy valuations, Everta is taking a capital-intensive, slow-burn approach focused on hardware excellence and operational resilience.
However, the EV infrastructure space in India is littered with promising entrants who struggled to scale beyond initial hype due to misaligned market timing and a lack of commercial traction.
Sector experts suggest the challenge isn't just about making chargers—it’s about where, how fast, and for whom they are deployed.
“Charger demand is not linear. It follows EV sales, not the other way around,” points out Ankur Dixit, Head of Business Development, Charging at VinFast India. “You can manufacture all the chargers you want, but unless EV adoption, especially in four-wheelers and fleets, accelerates significantly, those assets will sit underutilized.”
Everta’s confidence stems in part from its self-funded model, free from the short-term pressures of venture capital.
“We’re building with patience,” Parihar explained. “This is industrial manufacturing. It takes time.”
Time, however, may be a luxury the EV infrastructure sector can’t afford. A report by GameChanger Law Advisors and venture capital firm Speciale Invest finds that India has only one public charger for every 135 EVs — far below the global benchmark of one per six to 20 EVs. To meet the 2030 target of eight crore EVs, India would need 39 lakh public and semi-public charging stations. Today, it has just over 25,000.
That gap underscores the scale of the challenge—and the opportunity.
Everta is planning to hit its first-phase goal of 3,000 direct current (DC) chargers by 2027, targeting charge point operators (CPOs), fleets, and commercial vehicle players. Their first facility in Karnataka is being built with a ₹150 crore investment, scalable to over 7,500 units a year, indicating long-term vision.
“Most companies think about charging as a side business,” says Manasvi Sharma, Everta’s CEO. “We’re building a core business—our revenue model, investment and hiring strategy are all built around making and servicing chargers, not diversifying into other verticals.”
The space, however, is already home to incumbents like Delta Electronics, Exicom, ABB India, and others who have years of head start and field-tested deployments.
With such well-entrenched players and tight relationships already forged with OEMs and government contracts, breaking into this space could require more than a strong product—it may need a robust distribution ecosystem and significant price disruption.
Everta's plan to capture 10–15% of India’s DC charger market by 2030 sounds impressive. But this is a fast-moving market where technology expectations are rapidly shifting. Most OEMs are already migrating towards higher-capacity 120 kW–180 kW DC chargers to support next-gen EVs like the Tata Harrier EV and VinFast’s VF-7, Dixit said.
Everta’s initial focus—60 kW to 320+ kW DC chargers—aligns with this trend.
“We’ve partnered with StarCharge, who already has 2 million chargers deployed globally,” said Parihar. “They’ve been there, done that. Every major OEM vehicle has charged on their platform.”
But experts warn that global tech is no guarantee of local success.
“Setting up to 240 kW DC charging hub can cost ₹70–₹90 lakh. With utilization rates at just 4–5%, payback takes 5–6 years,” says Dixit. “Until that changes, even a great product might not move the needle."
In response, Everta believes that combining globally validated technology with local cost optimisation—targeting a 50% domestic value addition from day one—will be a critical differentiator.
“We’re building with indigenization in mind,” says Sharma. “Not just to meet Make in India requirements but to control quality and cost long-term.”
Yet, as several industry players have learned, price pressure from CPOs, fleets, and government tenders can shrink margins fast, and even well-made products face challenges if service turnaround times or installation complexity slows execution.
Everta emphasized its domestic manufacturing muscle, promising scalable capacity and robust local sourcing. “Our business model is built on local manufacturing, strong quality control, and tech-enabled service,” said Sharma.
Sharma brings a decade of hands-on experience in building India’s earliest EV charging networks. “I helped deploy India’s first public DC charger back in 2017. I’ve worked as a CPO. I know what fails in the field. And more importantly, I know what’s missing,” Sharma said.
What Sharma refers to is a fundamental industry gap—charging hardware is often sold without lifecycle support. “You can’t just sell the hardware and disappear,” he adds. “What India needs is uptime. We’re investing heavily in diagnostics, remote service capabilities, and modular components to ensure maximum availability.”
But experts remain cautious.
“DC chargers may offer better margins, but they also demand uptime and nationwide service support. That’s non-negotiable,” said a senior executive at a rival charging hardware firm. “What we’ve seen is companies fail not because they couldn't build, but because they couldn’t maintain what they built.”
To counter this, Everta is developing a remote diagnostics backbone, capable of over-the-air (OTA) firmware upgrades and fault detection—a feature still missing in many mid-tier chargers.
Internally, the team describes this as “zero-touch maintenance,” aiming to fix 80% of faults without a technician visiting the site. “If we can deliver that, our service advantage becomes significant,” Sharma explains.
But even remote diagnostics require robust grid conditions and backend software integration, both of which remain patchy across non-metro India. Deployment ambitions could quickly collide with infrastructural gaps and power instability.
FADA’s June 2025 data shows that while EV penetration is growing, electric passenger vehicles now account for just 4.4% of total car sales. That’s after an impressive 80% year-on-year growth, indicating momentum but also highlighting how small the current base is.
For EV infrastructure startups like Everta, this means betting on a future that hasn’t fully arrived yet. The government’s ₹10,900 crore PM E-Drive scheme, with ₹2,000 crore earmarked for public charging, is a strong start. But experts argue that far more will be needed to bridge the infrastructure gap.
Meanwhile, policy uncertainty, state-level delays, and the absence of a uniform nationwide EV infra blueprint continue to pose challenges.
Also, according to NITI Aayog, there's no global consensus on the right charger-to-vehicle ratio. It depends on urban density, commute distances, vehicle mix, and charging behavior.
“We’re not building for today’s EV base,” Parihar clarifies. “We’re preparing for 2027–2030, when EV penetration crosses double digits and charging becomes an operating backbone rather than a pilot project.”
This long-view strategy is commendable, but in a fragmented policy landscape where EV adoption is lopsided across states, Everta’s growth could be highly dependent on few early adopter markets like Maharashtra, Delhi, and Tamil Nadu—limiting national scale.
Everta’s leadership believes it boils down to focus, execution, and team alignment.
“We’re not chasing IPOs. We’re not chasing buzz. This is an infrastructure play. And infrastructure needs time, grit, and long-term commitment,” said Parihar.
He calls Everta an “industrial startup”—one that is patient, asset-heavy, and built to scale, not flip.
“Our goal is to be the go-to manufacturer for every serious CPO or fleet operator in India,” Sharma said. “We’ve seen the service failures, the reliability issues. We want to solve those with design, diagnostics, and discipline.”
They also insist that India will not just be a market, but a manufacturing and export base.
“As costs come down, we’ll be competitive for Southeast Asia and Africa,” Parihar added. Internally, Everta is also working on next-gen concepts—such as chargers bundled with battery storage and AI-based usage prediction.
“We’re watching how power demand shapes up—especially in Tier 2 and 3 cities where grid reliability is patchy,” Sharma notes.
The EV charging ecosystem is undoubtedly at a turning point. Between state subsidies, rising consumer interest, and a maturing product ecosystem, the next five years could define the sector’s long-term viability.
But turning points demand more than optimism. They require flawless execution, smart network planning, and deep resilience.
Everta has made a bold entry, backed by global technology, self-funded patience, and cross-sectoral experience. But its success will depend not just on what it builds—but where it lands, how long it lasts, and whether the market gets there in time. As Ankur Dixit puts it bluntly, “This isn’t about building the most advanced charger. It’s about putting it in the right place, at the right time—and keeping it running.”
In a market where infrastructure has often failed to keep pace with vehicle rollouts, Everta's claims of patience and precision may be tested by unforgiving market cycles, policy shifts, and the sheer pace of technological disruption.
In a market hungry for infrastructure but wary of half-baked solutions, Everta’s journey from vision to reality will be watched closely.