Revolutionizing EV Charging Infrastructure with DeCharge feat. Dr. Prakash Kamaraj

GM GM! Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week allowing founders, hackers and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they've built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Dr. Prakash Kamaraj, who is the co-founder of DeCharge. So if you didn't know, DeCharge is the first community-owned EV charging network built on Solana. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Dr. Kamaraj, learn about DeCharge and how you can get started using it today. All right, let's get into it.

GM GM! Welcome to the show, Dr. Kamaraj. I am ecstatic to have you on, man.

GM GM Narb. Uh, yeah, excited to be here. I know we've been coordinating this for a while but happy to kind of be on this episode, um, after a lot of quite a while stuff happening in the last couple of months in the tech side. Uh, but it's never been a better time to kind of be a builder and developer.

Well said, well said. I I 100% agree. Um, there's yeah, it's an exciting time to be alive for sure. Um, I know we have a very interesting topic in DeCharge today. Um, but before we get into that, did you just want to give an introduction about yourself?

Uh, yeah, definitely. So I'm Dr. Prakash Kamaraj, co-founder of and Chief Growth Officer at DeCharge. I take care of all things growth from product to GTM, uh, as a crypto-native co-founder. Um, so my co-founder, he's the co-founder, CEO is also the acting CTO. So we have a good kind of complementary skill sets to kind of grow DeCharge specifically. Um, but yeah, taking a step back, my background has been like very mixed of deep tech and real-world systems, starting from medical AI research to building physical infrastructure companies as well. Um, I also had a very good stint leading business technology at a Republic-backed Web3 social media company. This was before pre-FTX time, pre and post-FTX time. It was a very interesting time to kind of build in, but that gave my first full-time entry into the space. Um, but overall, yes, I think, uh, if I fast forward right now building DeCharge for the last couple two and a half years, uh, we focus on just one question: how do we make charging infrastructure programmable? Um, because EVs are growing exponentially but the infra coordination can't keep up, and I think the way we are approaching is far more superior to most of the centralized way of approaching this problem statement.

100%. And yeah, this is a very, very interesting project. Um, a very unique one. Uh, I don't think I've seen one like this before. Um, but just just curious like how did you find yourself, um, in technology in in the crypto space? Like what inspired you to kind of take that leap into this sector?

Yeah, that's a good question. This is I get asked this question a lot because, um, interesting background is that, uh, 12 years ago I was actually a medical doctor but I wanted to be in tech so I caught up with medical engineering, uh, did my master's the hardcore way from the basics. Uh, then was in the MedTech startup world for until like 2019. Um, my breakthrough moment was of course the pandemic time. Um, until now until then I didn't know that you could actually build products, it was even possible. Um, and and like most people in crypto you start with trading but there's always the pivotal moment to being a builder, right? Um, for me it was reading reading the open source books which is Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum. Uh, so that was it for me, um, because the way it explained the basics to even someone non-tech, that really blew my mind. I know a lot of people refer to the white paper but I was a fan of these books, uh, that caught my attention and I could explain to other fellow people who were in the space. So that was the crypto bug. Then of course, post-pandemic you had the entire DeFi summer happen. That was pretty much uh got me hooked into the space. I went into the entire rabbit hole of participating in Chainlink hackathons, Polygon hackathons, even how to be a blockchain dev with the likes of, I think Patrick Collins is one of my inspiration. Um, he even when I was a I used to ask a lot of stupid questions in the Discord and he still was very responsive and he would actually personally respond how to solve that particular problem, uh, even though this was like dev tooling was barely minimal. So that was actually very inspirational to me like someone so inspirational like that, uh, he can answer a very basic question even if somebody is asking being persistent. So that was what kind of caught my attention that you can actually do a lot in this space by being just helpful. Uh, that is something we we as builders sometimes tend to forget, but I think it's very important to kind of grow the space. Um, so that's what kept me going in the space that was much more interesting to me than what I was doing earlier. So that's when I quit my full-time job and started doing the hackathon, stumbled onto the Solana community. Uh, that was very interesting because early on they were very picky of choosing the builders, uh, giving out grants specifically to build on Solana ecosystem. So that was when I got introduced to some of the founders building in Solana ecosystem, that's when I got entered my full-time job leading, uh, the blockchain technology side. Which was interesting because nobody in the wildest dreams would think that you would go from doctor to MedTech to crypto. Uh, but there's a lot of interesting stories in the space, um, and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people that who have like a similar stories from starting from someone being a less specialized to a hardcore builder. Um, and I think one other aspect is also, um, that brings community together is the bull and bear cycles because there's a lot of trauma trauma bonding that happens, right? So I think what's common between whatever chain whatever stack we building on, um, I think the core problem statement always keeps us together and, um, I think it's it's really interesting time and it's actually a better time than for people who used to be in the bear cycles of 2018. Uh, and of course FTX crash is also one of the pivotal moments and now um, what we seeing now is really interesting in terms of how AI has kind of totally kind of changed the space. So that is pretty much a summary of how I found myself in this in this from starting with the mastering very simple moment of reading up the entirety of Mastering Bitcoin and Ethereum.

That's amazing man and a very inspiring story and yeah, uh you have a wealth of knowledge under your belt now uh and and 100% agree that yeah Patrick Patrick is awesome we've had him on the show before um and yeah that's awesome you you started in that community. Um I think there is none better um to to kind of get your wings under you for smart contract development and whatnot. And I guess um going from the medical field to engineering to to EV charging space is an interesting set of hops. Um and I guess for people who aren't very familiar um with the with the EV charging space like what would you say are the predominant challenges and problems surrounding surrounding that particular space?

Yeah, I think I'll I'll give a short intro to how we started. Obviously I think at the end of 2023 is when I met my co-founder and both he was actually building the product that was relevant to the space. And both of us actually wanted to build something that's like a long-lasting and not start something that changes every three months in terms of like the meta, but something that is really sustainable, right? If you want to build something really serious, you want to find a problem statement that's really compelling and like has like real pain points, right? Um, picture this, right? Like early days of fuel pumps, um, it took a while for the fuel pumps to emerge but the the automobiles were actually growing very slowly. Um, and and it once that happened you had different of course different forms of fuel and I think that kind of changed the entire industry all together differently, right? But for EVs it's not like that. Um, EVs are growing at a rapid pace but the infra is not keeping up. Um, imagine the city of thousand chargers, right? Some are empty all day, some have long queues and waiting time, people are frustrated, some are installed in the wrong locations, some some don't even work, that's even the frustrating part. Um, and this capital is actually being misallocated, right? This is a this contributes to loss of efficiency and this is why there's a stunning stat that most of the public charging chargers, not we're not talking about the home chargers, right? If you buy an EV they're going to sell you a charger that you install it at home, you kind of charge it at home grid capacity, but you always need somewhere public where you want to charge regularly, right? Whether it can be adjacent to a fuel pump or a convenience store at wherever it is, right? And location is everything. And the shocking stat is that public chargers operate at below less than 10% utilization. But EV demand is totally reversed, it's like growing at 30% every year and infrastructure is barely keeping up. Uh, and it's actually not a demand problem, there is enough supply, um, but it's a very much of a coordination nightmare, right? Um, you want the infrastructure to be available when it is like it's matching the demand and also also kind of balanced across time space and grid constraints, right? So this is only when all these factors are done really well, it makes it easier to run like a profitable business someone who is running a charge point station. Otherwise you want all of them running out of business, right? Uh, for fuel pumps don't have that problem because it's very much well coordinated everyone knows it's there at every corner. For EV charging station it's not like that. The ratio is staggeringly different, there's only one public charger for every 40 EVs on a global scale, right? Uh, this is mainly because there is not a good intelligence layer that can make these systems really efficient. Um, so that is what actually kind of inspired us towards resolving this problem, so that's the main challenges. So everyone it's not a chicken and egg problem, it's more of a coordination problem and the way the more organized well-organized it is and I think it will be a much compelling statement for EVs to be like adopted because you have countries having global mandates, right? You want to look at sustainability and COP 30 mandates. So the only way to make that happen is to focus on really smart efficient deployment of infrastructure and that is what we are focusing at DeCharge specifically.

Awesome. Yeah, and I guess um for for the crowd out here what what would you say is your elevator pitch of of DeCharge? Just a nice segue now.

Yeah, yeah, so picture this of course elevator you're five minutes to the next floor, right? Um, DeCharge the name stands for decentralized charging infra. Um, how we kind of done it is like through a community-owned model. Um, we kind of identify the pain points where we want to deploy and we pick the locations as a community you buy and you all you have to do is just buy the charger and give us the permission to deploy. And we make sure it's deployed at profitable locations, you get future incentives. Think of it like Helium, Hivemapper but we do it for you because we know the business really well. Um, this is because infra companies suffer from extreme fragmentation no matter how big or small, but we don't work for just one or two companies, we work for a very good network that is very very much precision based on where when demand is really well matched with the actual supply and so that there is a very good ROI for every deployment that we do. So even today this is a very profitable aspect that we do even without our token incentives being aligned. Um, and the scale at which we're done is very rampant. Um, close for like 300 chargers so far in two years which is almost like two chargers every day, which is no mean feat uh given that our contemporaries with similar capital are taken like years to build even like 500 stations. Uh, we also like scaled through crypto through DeFi capital and we were able to kind of build uh community capital to kind of deploy into like profitable locations. People also get like really good yields. And there's also a very good consumer app angle to all of this. Uh, we kind of aggregate and re-utilize chargers we make sure they're they have really good utilization which is the main problem statement for traditional business owners. We make sure they're they get access to community financing and there are also like good incentives aligned for the community that deploys. So in a nutshell it's like a two-sided marketplace where the community keeps deploying chargers around the world and we as a company we don't need to worry about accumulating chargers on the balance sheet because it is actually owned by the community. And the other sense we actually solve real problems for the businesses, right? So it's almost like Airbnb for EV charging that is meeting Stripe for energy, right? So there's a very good dual to Web2.5 story that we have and hopefully that is going to be helping in expanding a very good decentralized charging infra.

I I like that. I like that metaphor. Um, and there's there's also a token at play and and of course as you mentioned using the blockchain for for payments. Um, just curious like um the chargers themselves um I know you guys sell the chargers um are they meant for just like a business to buy and set up or can anybody um like someone like myself come up and and buy one and set it up in my place?

Yeah, definitely anybody can buy. So um we built the protocol layer ourselves which called OCPP or Open Charge Point Protocol which is the globally compliant one, right? So just so that even Google can pick up if you as long as your charger is built on the protocol. Um, the key difference is that like if a company like Tesla they let you host but they do not let you monetize, uh, because the protocol is built in that way you can't profit from it. Whereas what we do is we only work either with our own stations or with other charging stations we make sure you're able to monetize it, right? Uh, if you're able to monetize it that's the best way then it actually becomes like a fuel pump, right? There what's the point of having charging infra if you can't actually let people monetize it and make a business out of it, right? So that's the core motto because it has to be a public charging infra serves for public good also making it commercially viable. So the Open Charge Point Protocol is the core bread and butter of our entire product. That is a product and network is a product and every user that keeps adding to the network and it becomes really strong and resilient, that's the main product. The physical units themselves as long as they're like we make good partnerships so that we don't need to do all of it ourselves, of course we do it if whether it's profitable ones, but we are able to add other charge points to our network. Um, and we make sure they're matched with a good demand, right? And the question usually comes like why should we partner with you Narb? Because we don't have allegiance to a single charge point operator, what we do is actually we help make good really good partnerships, reduce fleet pricing, um, reduce pricing for people who want guaranteed utilization every day, um, especially for fleets like Uber India or like Grab Gojek, right? They all want guaranteed availability of chargers, right? Because EVs have cheapest cost per mile and they want to optimize people are very price sensitive. So you want to make sure they have good service so that that's where we come in. We make sure we get good utilization make sure the grids are really met well and then it becomes really a compelling use case for us. So as our use case is always like we make sure we are we expand as a network we enable you to monetize and grow as a business and it's not we don't compete with each each other we actually complement with everyone. And the token layer is just the incentive on top of it. A cherry on top because a user has an ability to add on to the network, awareness is a big thing, right? People get excited because and sometimes your crypto native crowd can be extremely good operators, right? Helium as a network still blows my mind, right? Because how is it even possible you have so much people deploying hotspots whereas through an average person if you go and talk about Helium it gets them at least like couple of weeks to figure wrap their head around it they because they don't understand how the incentives work but it it really enables the operator network in mind. So this this kind of unlocks a lot, right? Rather a single company that is restricted by geography or capital, you have like a network of warriors who can actually help you grow the network. So that's how we look at it. So you have the B2B layer that is exciting, you help people monetize in the right way possible and you also have the B2C layer so the network actually grows.

Yeah, I think this is a really, really awesome concept and amazing application of of a DePIN network. Typically you see a DePIN network kind of working to do some sort of AI thing, but yeah this is yeah this is pretty neat. Um, and you have a little demo as well. I think it's a I think it's a good time if you want to bring that up for the crowd to kind of visualize um what we're talking about.

Yeah, definitely. I I can show this demo. It's like it's really a fun one that we've viped for very short, mainly because we found we were not satisfied with the Web2 equivalent that is there right? Um, so we built the Scout App. This is practically like early alpha between our own community of builders that we did and and some of this was actually done when I was traveling to like Hong Kong and Singapore for a bit so that was something that I did. So um if you're in location you can run the Scout App and it lets you scan the charging stations nearby and you can actually check the info of every charge points that are there every notes. What are the amenities that are there? I mean it's still kind of raw rough around the edges for now, but it gives you a lot of information. So this can help people navigate the their trips really well especially long form ones even if Narb does it these information. These are all user curated information we have not done any of it ourselves, right? So all of this is kind of like a user curated model that we doing right now and I can give you a slight overview of how it looks like in my dashboard also right? Um what I've done is basically like during my three different trips I stayed at location I just ran this Scout App um and make sure that every charger that is applicable around the area gets aggregated onto my network I gain some points and this I these hang around like nodes with all the information like what are the places uh is this a good location I can charge and do also something at the place because charging is a time consuming process people want to have good amenities and all that right? So this is one cool way of us doing it in terms of what we intend to do.

And any new user right now if you can go um like for example if you log in to the account and you registered account and you run an AI Scout Agent. What it does is it checks the it fetches from everyone, Google Maps, PlugShare, OCPP protocol, and what it does is scans all the chargers in the surrounding area. Um for me now it's showing me a duplicate because I already scanned it here. But once you're done that what you're doing is you're aggregating the information around you. So it's like a Pokémon Go but you don't have to go around and do it. But uh we'll have something for that as well. But I think what we are trying to enable is like a very intelligent way of crowdsourcing intelligence because when this is possible and you looking at a really good map we can do a lot more information, right? Uh when a lot of real-world data is aggregated we can also collaborate with a lot of developers who run really good real-time data. I can also show you one uh agentic dashboard that we kind of did in terms of root optimization that will be helpful for businesses, right? Um we run a few simulating simulations of road trips if there people want to plan for. Um still rough around the edges um yeah. So if people want to kind of travel let's say from Hong Kong to Bangkok, right? Um how would it look like? So you want to have if you want to really save yourself and cause you want to make sure that you plan your trip really well, what time is it the lowest at this point of time and how can I save up on cost? So all of it is done. So imagine how much of this information is will be useful for businesses, right? Uh and I think that is the breakthrough that we will be seeing a lot and this is something not so all of this is happening just to crowdsourcing of information that we did for the last two and a half years and just all the intelligence models have come together to kind of simulate this for anywhere in the world.

So the the website is scout.decharge.io and I think if you're able to if you want to kind of play around our dashboard you can definitely make it's a simple registration and you can see the global map right now. We have I had a friend of mine who's scanned from US while he was a in Denver. So um this is going to be really fun one as we roll it out wide and you can also see the intelligent networks that are right now. Tesla is very popular obviously it's at the second. But a lot of independent networks are also around the world. So this is something we are really excited kind of roll out. Um this will be like a first of its kind global because no centralized company is going to want to do this, right? They don't know what a community can do but we kind of put a high price to that and it's going to be a really crowdsource intelligence and people get will get incentivized for it. We'll run frequent bounties for people to do a lot of this.

Yeah, like I said, I think this is really neat. Um, and this data that you were showing on this dashboard is it consumable via an API or via some SDK if a developer wants to make their own dashboard or integrate it into their own app?

Yes, definitely. So the public information is something it's a limited by what uh info that people submit on the public APIs, right? But our our data is much more customizable. We make sure that you have access to like uh like real-time telemetry, the fleet partners that we do with, every partnership that we made is like a plethora of info. Whatever we curate will be available at obviamente it's a two-parts way because we don't have enough data right now, but every once in a while we make sure when we have gather enough data around the cities that we are really making good partnerships, that will give that will be available for developers. So they can actually develop their own intelligent models that is going to be useful for their the business around their country, right? So that's what we looking at. So hopefully in the next quarter I think developers will be having able to we can spin up a lot of APIs with charger data, real-time telemetry, and then the next trigger would be like energy-based triggers, right? Like when is when is the best time to kind of charge my vehicle? And this is something the consumers will want to have. So this this kind of information make it like an agentic flow and at some point even the chargers will be talking to each other, right? So information is wealth and location is everything. Um and I think as contributors people can do a lot of public goods, right? And I think that's where the beauty is in terms of open source contributions which were really excited kind of accelerate.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think there'll also be some interesting applications when the the robo-cabs, robo-taxis kind of roll out as well. Yeah, they'll they'll need to keep charged, right? And I think it's a perfect fit. Um, and in terms of the the infrastructure that you've chosen, Solana as your core blockchain, um just curious what was the reasoning behind choosing that over over another chain?

Yeah, uh there's always like different sophisticated answers people like to say but my answer is much simpler mainly because it was just incidental at the time. Um it's also one one thing that Solana founders have really inculcated is they want to make companies build easier on Solana, right? That's always something as at least four years back the dev tooling was so bad you had to create like tons of hackathons to build move it, but now it's not the case. Obviously with the advent of AI is much easier. It's very easy to focus on the core business and the chain comes last, right? And I think that makes it really we keep meeting a lot of builders who are building in like deep tech and everything it's possible right now in Solana. Um of course I think it's it's also I would say it's also luck, right? Um if you look at Polygon is also same as Solana it's like cheap L2 and everything but you they chose a different product market fit now. They've gone all in on payments because they had a very good pattern for that. This is also a bit of luck, right? You never know where you start you could always change, right? So chain is fortunately it we didn't have to chase a lot of options because for me personally the proximity was always there and the pre and post-FTX era I think the community kind of stuck on. Uh but I always have a soft spot I always take my time to explore all the communities because I have a lot of fond memories contributing to GnosisDAO and all of them and even one of one of the protocols called Ocean Protocol I still have I am in touch with the friends there. So they still kind of building out their own OGs in terms of data based monetization. So a lot of good stuff everywhere but I think as a team we are happy to kind of be very nimble on building what's really important and Solana kind of makes it easy to kind of build everything. So the company building ethos along with the ecosystem is a big plus. So that's how kind of it for us.

Great answer. Yeah, yeah, and Solana has indeed matured quite a bit. Um, you see a lot more teams building within it now, which is great to see for greater competition in the space. And as we're kind of coming to time here, um, just curious um for our audience today who might be aspiring founders in the making, um what's some key um what's a key piece of advice you you'd give them um to help them kind of get along in their journey?

Yeah, I think this is going to be a very cathartic answer mainly because, um, you start building when there's real pain. Um, it's a very different answer mainly because not because people want might want to hear it, it's um, you want to find pain points and only when you solve really hardcore problems it's much easier to experience it and how you experience then you become build a story around it and that's how you kind of build a company, right? That's how it is. Uh, people want to build a company to make money, but it's actually the reverse, right? You want how do you clear value is not it's not very obvious. Um, but today you have all the tools to yourself, so now your job is now much simpler. Uh, increase pain tolerance that's a that's a must if you want to be a founder and the ability to be bounce back from anything any problem solving situation that's very important. Um, but if you want to be a really good founder you ought to make sure that you build well there is real pain point and not just narrative pain, right? Not just because there's a narrative that's really popular doesn't mean that it's has to be relevant over the years. You want to find what are the operational pain points it could be for a developer or it could be for a business, whichever it is, right? And when you do that uh as an let's say experiential mindset it's much easier to kind of easier to show and tell and build a story around it. When I say story it's very important because you want people to support. Uh you either want capital or you want users, right? That's only possible when you as a founder are able to kind of build, show and tell and that's will be very important. This is the biggest mistakes that developers face, um they think that just building I'll just build a software stack and sell it someday. That's not going to happen anymore. Building cost of building software has come to be basically zero, right? So it's very important to show why your product should matter to the users and how are you your solution any better, right? So people want to you want to resonate through your problem statement and your pain points as well, right? Um just to give an example we if we just want to build charging infra company we would have just raised from Web2 capital and everything, right? But we chose the hard way it was not easy you have like two different uh planes to kind of solve. So and being a crypto developer is much it's also an a great amplifier. So if you're a founder in this space or even if you're a developer in this space you want to find good really good problem statements and make sure there's absolute pain that you can solve and the belief that you are the one who's going to solve it, right? And I think that's where everything kind of the magic happens. So and then of course you will get more people around you whether it's investors or you build a team, build an A-listed team, then everything is history, right? Token comes last that you don't even need a token to begin with. You have have a very good fundamental problem everything else follows really well around you.

Yeah, I think that's very solid advice and I resonate very much with the build, show and tell. It's very much the the ethos of of this podcast and why it exists. So love to see it. Um and yeah as we're closing in on time, um what's the best way for people to keep up to date with all things DeCharge and um all the different features you guys are releasing?

Yeah, Twitter and Telegram are the best ways, and of course Twitter itself is good and my personal Twitter both are like good place I keep updating. We're going to talk a lot. The things right now is a good time to kind of build show and tell, so we to kind of doing that with our soft launch. You could say this is a soft launch of the Scout App. We going to keep talking about it and it's going to weave into a very good narrative. Um we are looking to kind of expand a lot more in the US market in terms of charging infra. It's much more expensive but it's definitely solvable through community participation. So that's what we looking at we want to spread the storytelling of finding chargers because people don't know unless you show them and tell, it's hard to understand is this even a problem. By the way they look at the fragmentation of infra around just by a single search agent then you it unlocks a huge potential right? So people are much motivated they'll be part of your community. So Twitter's the best way, um Scout is the Scout App is just the first step and soon it's going to be like a robust marketplace where you will we'll be connecting operators vendors who will help deploy if you want something deployed in your country right? Um we do our best to be like multi-country as much as possible if not we will make sure that we have find really good operators local operators and vendors manufacturers across the board. We're pretty much well connected and that's how we've been able to do a lot of hard jobs in the last couple of years across geographies which is which is the point pain point. Uh you want to take crypto you want to build make it a global story right? Not just building for one particular geography. So the same the same story you're going to find uh tune in to our Twitter, watch out for updates. We're going to put some bounties to help to help you along the the scouting journey as well and I think you will have fun along the way. If you're a developer watch out once we have enough information you have a lot of APIs that you can kind of use to build super cool agents that you can solve problems for us.

Right on. I'm looking forward to it and all that information will be in the description of of the podcast below. So definitely give that a check out. Um and with that, Dr. Kamaraj, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to come chat with us today. It was a pleasure and yeah really looking forward to continuing to see DeCharge evolve over the year years to come.

Pleasure and thanks for talking to you Narb. Yeah.

For sure, for sure. And yeah just want to wish everybody a very happy Wednesday, uh happy ETHDenver to those who are at the conference. Um be sure if you're looking for a side event today, Developer DAO is hosting the Après Ski event uh later in later this evening, so definitely give that a check out and get on the list if you're not already. And with that, we will catch you back here this Friday for another episode of DevNTell. Until then, have a good one folks. Cheers.

Cheers.