Chara Raises $4.75 Million In Pre-Series A Funding Round

Chara, a Bangalore-based deep-tech startup, has raised $4.75 million in pre-Series A funding round led by Exfinity Venture Partners, a Bengaluru-based VC firm known for its B2B focus and deep-tech expertise. This round also had participation from Vietnam-based Big Capital, the venture arm of Bitexco and Log9 Materials. Kalaari Capital and ciie.co who are existing investors participated in this round as well.

“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 in the future to the world,” said Bhaktha Keshavachar, founder and CEO, of Chara Technologies.

Chara has built motors for 2-Wheeler, 3 & 4-Wheeler LCVs and HVAC use cases. The motors and their matching controllers are being field tested and are expected to go into production later this year. Chara’s current motor range starts from fractional kW to 10’s of kW with voltage ranges from 48V to 400V. Higher voltages and powers will be built in the near future. Chara has filed patents in motor design, controller design and control algorithms for these motor technologies, claimed by the company in 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,” said Chinnu Senthilkumar, managing partner at Exfinity.

Founded in November 2019 by Bhaktha Keshavachar, Ravi Prasad Sharma, and Mahalingam Koushik, Chara is building a scalable, cloud-controlled, and rare-earth free platform for designing, building, and deploying electric motors for EV, HVAC and various other applications.