Summary[1]

Bonnet is a an app that grants EV drivers access to all EV chargers away from home. It allows the driver to find, route to and pay for their charging at public, semi- public and even private chargers. The main benefits of Bonnet include aggregated access to all chargers, standardised & transparent pricing for all chargers and the most reliable information on chargers in real-time.

Bonnet wants to completely eliminate range anxiety for all EV drivers and build the same ‘coverage’ for EV charging as we have for mobile phones today. The aim is to become the leading provider of everything to do with electricity entering the vehicle and, in the future, also electricity leaving the vehicle to be used for different purposes like energy arbitrage and storage solutions for the grid.

Seeking to raise £750k-£1M for a 12-month runway, of which £600k is committed.

Investment Interview[1]

Explain what your venture does.

Bonnet provides electrical vehicle drivers with smooth and reliable access to charging away from home. It is an app that allows drivers to find, route to and pay for any charging stations with just their phone.

What stage is your business?

Product is in the market and fully functioning. Launched in January. Initial revenue and customers. New customers growing 14% W-o-W. 26k+ charging locations across 15 countries.

Describe your advisers.

Jochen Rudat, ex-Director of Tesla Europe, directly reporting to Elon Musk; Prof. Goran Strbac, Power Engineering Professor @ Imperial; David J. Law, Global Head of Investors Group at Standard Chartered; Stephen Bee, ex-MD of ShareNow UK & current COO of Zwings; Dr. Harveen Chugh, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship @ U. of Warwick.

Give an overview of your startup's financing history.

1) Innovate UK Grant (01.10.2020) - £106,000 2) Axel Springer & Porsche (APX) PoC Investment - €50,000 – (10.10.2020). The grant and investment monies were used to; - Develop the software architecture onto a production environment on the cloud - Hire a full-stack engineer - On-board the first 8 charging networks (ESB Energy, EVBox, Franklin Energy, Alfa Power, Plug-N-Go, char.gy, Allego, Shell) - Launch partnerships with initial B2B users (FreeNow, Green Tomato Cars, WeFlex, (Zipcar, Bolt , Otto cars still to be launched)) - Complete R&D into demand-prediction algorithms and car connectivity - Improve the MVP version of the App - Test the product on hardware (car, cables, chargers) 3) Interest Free Loan From Family, friends and Angels - £50,000 – (01.04.2020). Used; to design and build the back-end software, the iOS and Android apps, as well as for admin expenses such as market research and legal.

Explain the ownership structure of your company.

51% Patrick Reich (CEO), 34% Eliot Makabu (CTO), 5% APX, 10% Option Pool.

How many employees do you have?

7.

How much money are you seeking to raise in the current round?

£750k-£1M.

Do you have any existing commitments to the current round?

£600k in hard commitments and lead investors. Current round includes institutional VCs, angels from the sector.

Explain why you are raising finance.

£1m in Seed Funding is being raised (minimum £750k) to give a 12 to 18 month runway. These fund will be used to: - To grow the base team – The round will be used to strengthen both technical expertise and sales ability within the Team. Two front end developers and a UI/UX Designer will work to improve the functionality/ customer experience of the SaaS platform and app. A B2C Growth Manager will focus on expanding the EV subscription user base (whilst the CEO focuses on CPO contracts). - To cover technology running costs (AWS, Databases, etc.), SaaS licensing fees (Stripe, App Stores, etc.) and third- party services (such as API calls for the route planner for example). Additionally, these costs will include testing hardware such as cables, chargers, car rentals, etc. - To cover CPO onboarding costs. For supply- side growth, there is a cost associated with the integration of charge point operators. These one-off costs can vary anywhere from £0 to £6,000 for some very large European charging networks. - For marketing, including advertising, referrals and partnerships. - To cover administrative costs, including office space, legal costs and some travel expenses.

Please explain the history of your venture.

Bonnet founders Patrick and Eliot completed their Master’s at Imperial (MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering). Their research was focused on electricity balancing and storage. After graduating, the Company was initially formed to design and manufacture smart charging hardware for EVs with Vehicle- To-Grid (V2G) capabilities. The aim was to produce EV chargers that could ship electricity into car batteries as well as out of them to produce one, large virtual battery out of thousands of individual EVs. However, it was soon clear that this idea was not commercially viable for the current level of EV uptake. The founders pivoted to focus on a more pressing pain point for EV drivers today, the difficulty of charging EVs away from home.

Please explain the longer term, future vision for the Company

The long-term vision of the company is to become a super app for all things electric transport. Charging away from home is the first step to making this happen. For the user, Bonnet will become the only app they need for EV ownership that will cover everything from charging, insurance, MOT servicing. On the supply-side, Bonnet will become a electricity-arbitrage player, providing services to the national grid.

Explain the core technologies and/or service propositions of your venture.

Bonnet has created an App for EV users with good UX and reliable, relevant data such as accurate charging point location and availability. Customers are able to connect a credit and pay for charging sessions on every charger that is available inside the app. Bonnet’s prices across all chargers are standardised irrespective of location and CPO, with no extra fees. Fleet clients receive the same benefits of the App in a SaaS platform to monitor and manage billing of their fleet. The Bonnet SaaS platform for CPOs is called “Dash”. Dash provides CPOs with charger analytics, user behaviours and user feedback. The information can be used to help CPOs better predict cash flows, and maintain/improve their network of charge points. The team is currently adding a benchmarking tool to the platform that will compare CPOs’ core metrics (utilisation, consumption, user count, etc.) to averages in the industry. Dash also contributes to the reliability of Bonnet’s service as issues raised about chargers are directly forwarded to CPOs on Dash, allowing them to quickly monitor and fix these issues and notify drivers.

What commercial progress have you made?

Over 26k charging points on the app, with major charging networks like Shell and EVBox. LOIs and launched partnerships with companies like Zipcar, Porsche, Bolt and others. Launched in the end of January with first users and revenues. Over 450 organic app downloads at £0 CAC.

References and notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Source: the company.