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The COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing in disguise for Akshay Goliya (EE ’10) in a single, significant way.

He’d married his wife the year before the outbreak. For 10 years he’d been working for his uncle’s electronic manufacturing company, being given larger and larger responsibilities. Before COVID-19 hit, he’d finished restructuring the entire business, including the acquisition of two plants in Poland and bolstering their employee base.

And then, with COVID-19…a pause. A time to reflect.

“It definitely gave [my wife and I] a time to get hold of the things we were taking for granted. We were on a rollercoaster ride, and it gave us clarity. COVID helped us see what is really important,” Goliya says.

Though he’d thrived as a business executive, “I was always a big engineer at heart. I realized if I stuck with [business restructuring] too long it would be going in the wrong direction,” Goliya says. “I wanted to go on an adventure that had some scale.”

At the same time, the world around him was rapidly changing.

Both he and his wife, a chartered public accountant, saw great growth in electric vehicles in India, not to mention around the world. It wouldn’t be that much different from what he already specialized in.

But as the world slowly began to emerge from the pandemic, Goliya did the opposite. He holed up and dedicated himself solely to designing a next-generation electric vehicle (EV) charger. His wife, Saloni Goliya, focused on finances and provided feedback.

“I really went inward, I cut off all the noise, removed all social media apps from my phone, computer, and iPad,” Goliya says. “If you’d ask me what was going on in the world, I’d have no idea.

“At this point, we were dreaming, sleeping—everything—was about S-Charge.”

He and his wife founded , an EV charging company based in Nashik, India, just outside Mumbai, in 2022. By January 2024, after consulting with friends and relatives in the tight-knit manufacturing community of Nashik, Goliya emerged from his cocoon and brought his vision to bear.

S-Charge has since seen surprising success: It has steadily ramped up its manufacturing capacity, and expanded from selling solely in its home state of Maharashtra to selling across India. S-Charge now sells to Jio BP, the largest EV charger network in India, and plans to sell internationally, including in the United States, in early 2025.

“We were always aspirational, and wanted to figure out where the world was going and what was next,” Goliya says. “EVs were coming up big time. We all saw the transformation.”

But leveraging that transformation wouldn’t be easy.

A BUMPY ROAD

Historically, electric vehicles have traveled a bumpy road in India.

“India is a complicated country: We are power deficient, and sometimes there are thefts on the road,” Goliya says.

But the bigger problem in the Indian EV space was that most parts were imported, and software products often didn’t integrate well. Software and hardware were typically built by different companies, and the user experience was rarely stellar. Sometimes mobile apps told customers they had paid, without any evidence at the charging stations. As for the chargers themselves, they were incredibly complicated, utilizing numerous different technologies that few companies knew how to make. Those companies could be from China, Japan, or Europe, and each used a different charging standard.

So Goliya quickly decided to go big with a “foundational anchor”: to make an integrated product, including a full hardware and software stack, that would work with any vehicle on the road using the CCS2 standard, a very common combined charging standard.

“We tried to make everything ourselves, because we really love it, and we have quality control over all the processes,” Goliya says.

It helped that Goliya made a lucky, if well-informed, guess. In the midst of casting his prototype products in 2023, India adopted a national charging standard, settling on the European standard, which is compatible with the U.S. Existing EVs in India using the Chinese standard—the first to be adopted in the country—will be phased out.

“This was lucky for us, because we had partners in Europe: We guesstimate it,” Goliya says.

“I always believed he would do something like that. He has his own set of ideas and way of doing things,” says Sukrit Bharati, a longtime friend and constructive critic of Goliya’s who owns his own Nashik-based electronics manufacturing company, Virtuoso Optoelectronics Limited.

“The sector is booming that he’s chosen,” Bharati adds. “All the tech and software and hardware, that’s not available with a lot of local companies, and it’s being imported, so that gives him an advantage over the competition. I think the products have come out really well, and they’re hearing very positive things from customers.”

The company now offers three products: a direct current (DC) fast charger, which can charge a car in 20 to 40 minutes; an alternating current (AC) “wall box” charger, typically installed at an office, hotel, or residential building for overnight charging; and a “smart socket,” which can plug into an outlet to charge anything from cars to laptops. They’ve also launched their own app and charger payment platform.

All of the devices can be monetized, allowing customers to charge for their use. And perhaps most importantly, their smart socket and app will work for any EV charging standard.

S-Charge’s primary competitor, Bolt, offers a similar product, but their charger only works with their own app.

Now that he sees products on the shop floor and shipping out the door, “I’m getting a little sleep. Things are stable,” Goliya says. “The real investment was in the technology, the design, and tooling. In terms of capacity, we are quite equipped in India in terms of talent to ramp it up in a big way.”

FAMILY BUSINESS

Goliya comes from a family of manufacturers.

His grandfather, Joharimal Goliya, started Shanti Instruments in 1965 in Mumbai, where he made Earth testers and volt and amp meters. His father and uncle later joined the business, though after his father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, his uncle, Narendra Goliya, became the anchor, scaling up the business and opening Rishabh Instruments in Nashik. The family then moved there.

There were rules when it came to money.

“No one in the family messes with stocks. We avoid passive income. By not working, you tend to get lazy,” Goliya says.

After graduating from Illinois Tech, Goliya returned home before his family instincts kicked in.

“After staying home for two days, I was convinced I needed to get back to work,” Goliya says.

He started on the floor at Rishabh, doing “anything and everything,” from making the meters to serving as his uncle's assistant. The company acquired two plants in Zielona Gora, Poland, and his uncle tapped him to assist in the acquisition, as well as offering him a lead role in the company’s larger restructuring and the creation of a company software package. When Goliya told his uncle about S-Charge, he offered seed money.

“My role then was understanding what customers need,” Goliya says. “It’s what I do now, too.”