Capital A invests in Oorja for safe EVs in India

In order to boost the Indian electric vehicle (EV) industry, Capital A, a venture seed fund for early-stage start-ups has made a strategic investment in Oorja, a company that aims to empower automotive companies to design better batteries. The money will be made available from “Evolve”, a $10-million cleantech fund that Capital A had launched earlier this year.

The global EV evolution is directly dependent on the enhancements in the battery technology. With emphasis on sustainability, governments all over the world are rolling out ambitious EV goals in tight timeframes which leads to severe pressure on the EV manufacturers. They are compelled to quickly enter the market despite having limited success in battery optimization and safety research.

‘Temperature’ or ‘Heating up’ of batteries has been a major reason behind numerous incidents of EVs catching fire, and that’s a major challenge for the ecosystem as it scampers for getting more vehicles on the roads. It is this fundamental problem that Oorja is aiming to solve through its innovative and cutting-edge integration of physics with machine learning. It eliminates the need for data intensive research or costly infrastructure for battery optimization. Thus, Oorja’s technology enables a faster, safer and significantly more energy efficient battery performance for the EVs.

Speaking about the investment, Ankit Kedia, Founder, Capital A, said, “Through our cleantech fund ‘Evolve’ and this strategic investment in Oorja, we are working towards the larger goal of cementing the safety, effectiveness and productivity of the EV battery ecosystem. Through Oorja, Vineet Dravid has built a system that reduces time and costs for EV OEMs as well as charging solution providers alongside significantly improving safety and accuracy. We are happy to be a part of their efforts to propel the Indian EV industry further and support the Indian government’s efforts in this segment as well. Our strong network of national and global resources will always be there for them whenever they need it.”

Adding his comments, Vineet Dravid, Founder, Oorja, said, “We at Oorja believe in design processes that help in devising products focusing on specific customer problems.  We have built an easy to use and interactive interface based on a maintenance free SaaS model, the first in the industry. Our solution is unique and beneficial to the ecosystem in many ways. It is a faster and highly accurate solution for heat and capacity fade prediction, an area that has been the Achilles heel for the EV industry. With Capital A’s investment, we will be able to expand our market access and reach out to OEMs with the game-changing solution and our expert support as well as calibration services in a highly cost-effective manner”.

Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Oorja combined physics and machine-based learning to answer various questions around batteries, their life cycle, manufacturing, etc. The current battery optimization approach is time and data intensive and prone to errors. Oorja’s first-of-its-kind technology uses physics and math-based solutions supplemented by an algorithm grounded in reality which uniquely positions us to solve customer problems with greatest accuracy.

The EV ecosystem is growing at an incredible pace in India as well as in all leading markets internationally. The unique, economical and extremely effective proposition of Oorja makes it an ideal candidate for massive growth in the years ahead. Oorja is the second investment for Capital A in the cleantech and electric mobility segment after an investment of $2.5 million in Chargeup, the company building Bharat’s largest network of Battery Swapping Stations.

Capital A offers equity, engagement and network capital to early-stage startups. The cleantech fund ‘Evolve’ is part of the larger corpus of $25-million proprietary fund and aims to help early-stage start-ups with capital infusion to develop products and technologies to boost the EV ecosystem in the country.

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