Monta, the electric vehicle (EV) charging platform, has announced it has closed a €15 million (£12.5 million/$17 million) Series A funding round to help it expand into more territories. The funding round was led by Creandum, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Stockholm, with significant investment also coming from Headline.
With this latest funding, Monta will have raised more than €20 million (£17 million/$23 million) in just over a year since the company was founded. The company previously raised a total of €5 million (£4.2 million/$5.7 million) in Pre-seed and Seed rounds.
The UK needs 400,000 public chargers by 2030, which is a sharp increase from the 42,000 currently available, but the quantity alone does not solve the everyday challenges current electric vehicle drivers are facing. Some early shakers in the market have built their own systems, regardless of other manufacturers, creating a maze of unconnected, unaccessible charging stations.
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Despite booming sales of electric vehicles, chargers are still scarcely populated outside of major cities, payment options vary from tap and pay to apps and RFID cards. As a result, electric car drivers are often left in the dark regarding price and occupancy.
Meanwhile, charge point owners have no means of offering access to their charge points, collecting payment or insight into energy use. Monta bridges that barrier by using open software standards while developing a product for both electric vehicle drivers and charge point owners.
Casper Rasmussen, Monta CEO and co-founder, said: “As an EV driver myself, I’ve experienced first-hand the pains of charging my car outside the bigger cities. At one place, the charge point is out of order, at another, you need to download a specific app.
“Monta streamlines the charging experience for EV drivers and by offering full control to charge point owners, we are effectively expanding a sustainable EV charging network globally.”
Through its web platform, Monta’s charge point management system provides charge point owners with a solution to attract users and manage charge point use, pricing, access, and transactions.
For electric vehicle drivers, Monta provides reservation, virtual queuing and payment features under one platform as well as unlocking public charge points to reduce the risk of drivers being caught out of range.
Jonathan Becker, headline partner, said: “Monta is the ultimate companion to any electric vehicle. By focusing on open software standards, the team is building the operation system for anyone that seeks or provides EV charging.
“Solving the hurdles of public charging means accelerating EV adoption: Headline supports this vision and the Monta team has the deep product experience and ability to execute it at speed.”
The funding comes with the expectation that Monta will help revolutionise the industry by expanding and opening up the global charge point network. Monta will also use the investment to double their employee count, expand to two new countries in Europe and grow its position in five active markets.
Rasmussen concluded: “Our mission is to accelerate EV adoption through innovative software and services. For too long the EV ecosystem has been dominated by old-school players like electricity companies, hardware manufactures and charge point operators.
“As a tech company, we’re building a charging architecture free from legacy software that is ready to scale across borders and hardware. With this latest funding round, we’re one step closer to accomplishing this mission.”
