Indian co-founded Coulomb Technologies raises $14 Million

Bangalore: Campbell, California based Coulomb Technologies, a provider of electric vehicle (EV) charging station infrastructure, has secured $14 million in Series B venture funding round. This financing round is led by Voyager Capital and Rho Ventures. Siemens Venture Capital GmbH and Hartford Ventures, a strategic investment division of the Hartford Financial Services Group also participated in the round.

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Fueling its expansion into the market for powering EVs, Coulomb will use the funds to expand research and development, operations capital and sales. Coulomb's expansion will also include further penetration into worldwide markets including Asia and South America. Founded in 2007 by Richard Lowenthal, Praveen K. Mandal, Harjinder S. Bhade and Dave Baxter, Coulomb has managed to introduce networked charging stations for EVs. Mandal is also the President of the company and Bhade is the Vice President of Engineering, Software of the company. Joining the board of directors are Daniel Ahn, Managing Director at Voyager Capital and Mark Leschly, Managing Partner at Rho Ventures.

"We are pleased to partner with a group of high quality, experienced investors. This funding will allow us to accelerate our growth and further deploy the ChargePoint Network infrastructure that is necessary for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles," said Lowenthal, who is also the CEO of Coulomb Technologies. From the first installation of ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations in 2008 to the latest opening in Honolulu Hawaii, the ChargePoint Network is used by EV drivers looking to quickly and safely fuel their electric vehicles. Coulomb has an established customer base in North America and Europe and is poised for massive growth to install thousands of charging stations in 2010.

Today Coulomb has more than 120 customers including McDonalds, Dell Corporation, Reliant Energy, DTE Energy and Element Hotels. Cities worldwide including San Francisco, Houston, Amsterdam, Chicago, Nashville and Bochum, Germany, now have Coulomb's charging stations installed for consumer and fleet use. The foundation for these accomplishments is the development and implementation of the ChargePoint Network powered by Coulomb's advanced networking software technology. This network of charging stations is open to all drivers of plug-in vehicles and provides authentication, management, and real-time control through multiple web-based portals for hosts, fleet managers, drivers and utilities.

According to the company, its software technology allows the utility and government customers to scale their networks up to very large numbers of stations. Coulomb also has an extensive distribution covering North America, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "We believe Coulomb will be able to maintain a substantial, sustainable competitive advantage over time, and build a significant business in a large potential market," said Daniel Ahn, Managing Director at Voyager Capital.