20 Things You Didn’t Know About ChargePoint
ChargePoint is a California-based tech company. It specializes in the manufacture of technology for its electrical vehicle charging stations network. With more electric vehicles on the road today, there is a growing need for more places to get a charge, similar to fueling up at a gas station, only with electric power to charge their batteries. The enterprise has become a leader in the industry with its utility grid management technology, public EV charging stations, and consumer subscription plans. If you’re not yet familiar with this company, here are 20 things you probably didn’t know about ChargePoint.
1. ChargePoint helps manage utility grids
According to Crunchbase, the technology that ChargePoint manufactures helps electric utility companies to manage their grids. Large draws on electrical supplies can lead to complications such as brownouts and blackouts. To avoid these service disruptions, ChargePoint has developed technology and solutions that help electric utility companies better manage the demands placed on the grid through high consumer activity, to provide smoother electric demands.
2. ChargePoint is a versatile enterprise
ChargePoint has a far-reaching impact on multiple industries within society. The products and services that it offers are listed under the electric vehicle (EV) industry as it provides technology for automobile charging stations. Because of its impact on these industries, it is classified as a business serving the automotive and electric vehicle industries. It is also categorized in the manufacturing and smart cities industries because it helps electric utilities to better manage their power grids that serve cities that are moving towards smart technologies.
3. ChargePoint is not a new business
ChargePoint has been around for a while. The San Francisco-based startup was founded in 2007. It has been in operation for fourteen years. The legal name of the company is ChargePoint, Inc., but it is also known as Coulomb Technologies. When you hear either of these names, they are the same enterprise.
4. ChargePoint has five founders
ChargePoint is the result of the efforts of five co-founders who joined forces to create a joint business together. The founders are Dave Baxter, Harjinder S. Bhade, Milton T. Tormey, Praveen Mandal, and Richard Lowenthal. A few of the five co-founders were first-time entrepreneurs at the time that ChargePoint was launched. Praveen Mandal founded 2 organizations. Each of the co-founders brings unique business experience and talents to the group.
5. Praveen Mandal is a serial entrepreneur
Mr. Mandal is a co-founder of ChargePoint. Before launching this company, he established an impressive record for establishing five formative stage startups. He is the co-founder of 2predict and served as its chief executive officer. He also served as the chief technology officer of Volta Charging. Mandal also founded Emerging Technologies Group, serving as the senior vice president and general manager, ChargePoint, serving as president, and Pipal Systems, serving as the chief executive officer. He was also vice president of research and development at Riverstone Networks and Lucent Technologies, and he currently serves on the advisory boards for the MIT Connection Science Group, as well as the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Mandal has co-invented 10 awarded patents. He graduated from Santa Clara University with his BSCE degree.
6. ChargePoint has a 15-member executive leadership team
The core executive leadership team for Chargepoint is comprised of fifteen members. Pasquale Romano is president and chief executive officer. Dave Baxter is a co-founder and vice president of hardware engineering. Michael Hughes is chief commercial and revenue officer. Rex Jackson is the chief financial officer. Christopher Burghardt is the managing director in Europe. Colleen Jansen is the chief marketing officer. Bill Loewenthal is senior vice president of product, and Eric Sidle is the senior vice president of engineering. There are seven other members of the executive team not listed.
7. ChargePoint has a strong board of directors
The board of directors for Chargepoint is comprised of several members with 8 notable advisors onboard. Michael Linse joined the board on May 7, 2012. He is a managing director of Linse Capital with one portfolio company. He currently serves on three boards of directors in advisory roles. Rick Wagoner joined the board on April 6, 2017. He is a member of the advisory board for Docusign with 3 portfolio companies. He currently serves on 7 boards of directors in advisory roles. Neil Sl Suslak joined the board as a member in May of 2014. He is a managing partner of Braemar Energy Ventures and has founded one organization. He currently serves on four boards of directors in advisory roles. Axel Harries joined the board in March of 2017.
He is the vice president of Daimler and currently serves on one board of directors in an advisory role. Mark Leschly joined the board in September of 2010. He is a managing partner at Rho Capital Partners with one portfolio company. He currently serves on 19 boards of directors in advisory roles. Bruce Chizen joined the board in November of 2014. he is a venture partner at Voyager Capital with three portfolio companies and one exit. Tony Canova joined the board in April of 2018 as an advisor. He is the chief operating officer at ChargePointand currently serves on one board in an advisory role. Pasquale Romano is also a board member, president, and CEO of Chargepoint. He has founded two organizations and currently serves on 2 boards of directors in advisory roles.
8. ChargePoint uses a complex array of technologies
ChargePoint actively uses 76 technologies to power its website. Although it’s a complicated suite of different technology products and services, the It team at the company works to keep everything running in sync to ensure that visitors to the website enjoy a smooth and seamless experience. The technologies are distributed across 33 technology products and services. Some of them include jQuery, Google Analytics, Google Fonts, SPF, iPhone Mobile Compatible, Viewport Meta, and a few dozen others.
9. ChargePoint has a high IT overhead
ChargePoint has disclosed that it has a high overhead cost for its annual IT and technologies services and products expenses. It takes dozens of different technology products and services to make the website function properly, and this comes at a high price. It is estimated that ChargePoint will spend $3.3 million on IT costs for the 2021 fiscal year. This is just the cost of doing business in a competitive world.
10. ChargePoint experiences thousands of monthly downloads
The analytics for ChargePoint shows that the past thirty days have been good for the enterprise. Visitors have downloaded the apps at a high rate. There has been a total of 24,521 app downloads with the most popular being ChargePoint, followed by ChargePoint Australia, then ChargePointEU. Most app downloads are made through Itunes connect and Google Play.
11. ChargePoint maintains its uniqueness against the competition
ChargePoint is a unique company that stands out from others in the industry. This is because it has secured dozens of registered patents. So far, ChargePoint has secured 47 registered patents in the Generation: Conversion or Distribution of electric power category. In addition, it has secured 18 registered trademarks in the scientific and technological services category. These patents and trademarks give ChargePoint legal ownership of the intellectual properties and technologies they represent. None of its competitors in the industries can copy or imitate them. This is what makes ChargePoint stand out from all of the other companies that offer similar products and services.
12. ChargePoint’s web traffic is growing
According to the analytics for the ChargePoint website, the amount of monthly visits to the website is growing at an impressive rate of 9.14 percent. Over the past 30 days, there have been 550,961 visitors to the site. This has resulted in ChargePoint receiving the ranking of number 75,437 of the millions of websites registered on the world wide web.
13. ChargePoint is the most popular in the United States
The majority of visitors to the ChargePoint website come from the United States. This country represents 81 percent of the web traffic with a monthly visits growth of 8.9 percent. Eight percent of the web traffic comes from Canada. Three percent of visitors are from the United Kingdom. Just one percent of visitors are from India, but the monthly visits growth is 31.84 percent. One percent of the web traffic comes from France with a remarkable monthly visits growth rate of 62.91 percent.
14. ChargePoint acquired ViriCiti
According to Techcrunch, ChargePoint purchased a European electric fleet management company based in Amsterdam. The name of the company is ViriCiti. The cost of the acquisition was $88 million in cash and the deal is the second acquisition that ChargePoint has made as a part of its growth and expansion campaign. This strengthened the infrastructure of ChargePoint, adding a fleet of network ports that number 2,500 to its existing network. Also, 3,500 connected vehicles came with the deal as ViriCiti had established some big customers including British public transportation company Arriva, and in Berlin, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority, and Chicago Transit Authority.
15. ChargePoint acquired has-to-be
ChargePoint’s other acquisition was for a European charging software startup named has-to-be. The deal cost ChargePoint $295 million in cash and stock. Upon the acquisition, ChargePoint grew by over 125 new employees along with a managed network of over 40,000, plus the company’s operating software.
16. ChargePoint is a leader in North America
ChargePoint’s two acquisitions resulted in its growth and expansion. It also gained the oversight of new products and services through its acquisitions. Some of the new features that it offers, as a result, are battery health monitoring, vehicle charge scheduling, enhanced vehicle telematics capacities, and vehicle operations data management. These are all software features that are currently offered as part of the core services. ChargePoint has grown to become the largest network for vehicle charging on the North American continent with over 112, 000 charging points throughout the world and 3,500 DC fast chargers with another 175,000 charging spots throughout the network obtained through roaming agreements.
17. ChargePoint is a publicly-traded company
In March of 2021, ChargePoint’s leadership took the company public. The deal was facilitated as a part of its merger with a blank-check company called Switchback Energy Acquisition Corporation. According to Global Fleet, ChargePoint made it official in the SPAC merger that finalized in the latter part of February. It’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CHPT. The opening price on March 1, 2021, was $32.20 per share. After a few days’ trading, the stock price closed at $28.50 or share.
18. ChargePoint serves a diverse customer base
ChargePoint provides a cloud subscription platform with software-defined charging hardware in its networks. The platform is designed for serving a variety of different clients including individual consumers for home use, for the workplace, hospitality, retail, transport fleets, parking, and many more industries.
19. ChargePoint is hiring
According to LinkedIn, ChargePoint is expanding its workforce. We noticed that there are currently 172 open positions with the company. There are many jobs open throughout the United States in Arizona, California, and other states. Many positions are open to any US resident for remote work.
20. ChargePoint is also hiring internationally
ChargePoint is also expanding its workforce outside of the United States. We saw job openings for workers in Reading, England, in the United Kingdom, as well as for Gurgaon, Haryana, India, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, New Delhi, India, Irkutsk, Russia, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. ChargePoint is beefing up its presence throughout the world to become a stronger global force throughout the world. It’s a company to keep your eye on with its new public status. If you’re looking for a new option to diversify your investment portfolio, this one is worth considering.
