Malvern based smart charging tech company Indra secures £6 million investment

By Nicky Godding

3 February 2021

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Bristol-based lawyers at international legal practice Osborne Clarke have advised the Clean Growth Fund on a £6 million co-investment with Gulf Oil in Indra, the UK’s leading smart charging technology company.

The investment is the second made by the Clean Growth Fund and the first strategic move by Gulf Oil International into the e-mobility sector.

Indra, based in Malvern, Worcestershire, is a fast-growing electric vehicle and smart energy technology company developing innovative charging and energy storage solutions for home and commercial use.

It manufactures a range of smart energy products, including its market-leading electric vehicle smart charger and a bi-directional “Vehicle to Grid” charger designed for residential and light commercial use. Indra’s smart chargers allow users to charge their vehicles during off-peak times, when grid carbon intensity is at its lowest via Kaluza’s intelligent software platform.

The Clean Growth Fund and Gulf Oil will each become shareholders in Indra, alongside Bristol-based OVO Group, which invested in Indra in 2017, taking it from a fledgling technology start-up to an “entech” challenger, building the world's first domestic Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charger and exporting its technology as far as Australia and Taiwan. Through Kaluza’s market-leading smart charging capability, Indra’s V2G chargers are the first to provide grid flexibility in the UK, supporting grid balancing as more renewable energy and higher demand affects the system.

Mike Schooling, Indra’s founder and Chief Technology Officer said: “Indra is all about technology and using it to support the journey to Net Zero. Thanks to the early investment by OVO Group, and now with the investment from the Clean Growth Fund and Gulf, we are in a very strong position to take full advantage of the growing EV market and the emergence of V2G solutions in the UK and globally.”

“Our smart charger technology enables others to use their energy more efficiently and at lower cost. The fact that the technology provides solutions to tackling the complex challenges of climate change is a fantastic benefit.”

“Over the next few years, we will develop a suite of products for people’s homes. While on people’s driveways, we will see battery storage, chargers and even entire vehicles containing our technology rolled out to market.”

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.