50. VoltShare – EV charging solutions for hotels and hospitality

Founder: Sheng Liu, Zhong (John) Zheng, Jonathan Ngiam
Year founded: 2019
Website: voltshare.co.uk

It was while visiting a popular park in Surrey that VoltShare founder Sheng Liu had trouble finding a charging point for his electric vehicle (EV). Frustrated, he nonetheless had a lightbulb moment: the lack of convenient and accessible charging options at hotels and other travel destinations was a significant gap in the EV charging market.

Here’s the rub. While more people are buying EVs — the number of them on the road reaching 40 million in 2023 — hospitality establishments have been put off investing in charging stations because of long term lease commitments and expensive subscription fees.

Enter VoltShare with its scalable and affordable solution tailored to hospitality businesses. It offers remote firms such as hotels or golf resorts access to high quality EV chargers (which can cost as much as £4,000 upfront). Meanwhile, by signing up to the VoltShare app, their customers are able to easily search for charging points by location, availability, and price.

VoltShare’s unique pay-as-you-go business model was a particular hit with the judges.

VoltShare’s unique pay-as-you-go business model was a particular hit with the judges. Through it, firms avoid the hefty upfront costs that come with purchasing and installing EV chargers. Instead they pay based on usage, making it more financially manageable.

Naturally, launching any tech startup brings one significant hurdle to navigate: early-stage capital. By pitching at business competitions and events, networking with angel investors, and applying for grants, it was able to get going with that first spark of investment.

Since then, though, the money has flowed like electricity. VoltShare bagged £500K in growth funding in June 2024 from seed-stage investor SFC Capital and has expanded its team significantly over the last year. This growth has allowed the company to accelerate its development efforts, expand operations and provide better 24/7 support for its clients.

As for the future, VoltShare has some big plans to become the UK’s leading EV charging provider for accessible green travel, expanding into shared office car parks, residential block charging solutions, and even fleet management.

Backed by solid funding, a fast-growing team and this commendable mission, here at Startups we have no doubt that VoltShare is travelling in the right direction, sustainably.