Like many great inventions, Inductive Robotics’s tech was born out of necessity. When Madhav Ayyagari was completing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley, his apartment didn’t offer EV charging—the owner said it was “too complicated.” The problem was top of mind when he had to pitch a business idea in his entrepreneurship class.
“I was going to the charger every other day, I was spending my valuable time,” Ayyagari explains. “I pitched, would people want the charger to come to them?”
The idea took off from there. Ayyagari—whose background is in industrial automation—and David Alspaugh co-founded Inductive Robotics in 2023, with a mission to make EV charging convenient for drivers and cost-effective for parking lot operators.
The startup’s robots deliver charging to cars that are sitting in parking lots, eliminating the need to demarcate specific parking spots with EV chargers. The robots charge up at a docking station that draws power from a nearby building throughout the day to even out demand spikes. Unlike traditional EV chargers, Inductive Robotics’s tech can be inexpensively deployed in a matter of days without costly infrastructure installments.
“Our goal is to break the connection between fixed chargers and EV-charging spots,” says Ayyagari, the company’s CEO. “It eliminates the problem of ‘how many do you build?’”
Since Inductive Robotics’s solution doesn’t involve major capital expenditure, the startup can work with parking-lot operators rather than owners—connecting with the people who are most familiar with the individual lot’s needs. Inductive Robotics’s target customers include commercial parking operators, commercial fleets, and airports, and it operates with a subscription model that allows customers to retain profits from EV charging. The startup handles all maintenance and upkeep.
Drivers using Inductive Robotics’s charging system can pick up an adapter from an on-site kiosk—or hang onto an adapter from the startup, if they’re a regular user—and set preferences via an app, including what time they plan to return to their car.
Each robot helps drivers avoid about 50 tons of CO2 emissions per year, according to Ayyagari.
Inductive Robotics has built a prototype of its charger robot and is doing a pilot with its first customer, Metropolis, this summer. The startup is currently raising a $2M pre-seed round; interested investors can get in touch here.
Inductive Robotics also plans to grow its team in 2025 and work on additional features based on customer needs, such as real-time data analytics about how many parking spots are available.
The startup joined Greentown Houston in late 2024, and was accepted into Greentown and Browning the Green Space’s ACCEL program earlier this year.
“Greentown has been very helpful,” Ayyagari says. “There are many corporate partners who are willing to help. The ACCEL program has a lot of interesting content about fundraising and communicating your vision, and things of that nature. The events are also really, really helpful—the more exposure we have, the better results we have.”
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