Muffi Ghadiali is the Co-founder and CEO of Electriphi, a startup company that is building a platform that helps conventional commercial vehicle fleets transition to electric vehicles. In this interview by Hilary Davidson we explore insights about your company, background, and our ideas for the future.
HD: How did you first get started in electrification and where did your idea come from?
MG: Two things sort of happened at once. I’ve always been intrigued by electric vehicles and the introduction of the Nissan Leaf coupled with the traffic on my commute on highway 85 made it a no brainer to go electric. Then, having been a startup founder previously, I started to reach out within my VC network to find leads for new and innovative companies. As it turns out, this led me to join an e-mobility startup, which made sense now that I had direct consumer experience and business expertise. I met with the executive team and quickly became the link between customers and the engineering teams.
HD: How did that experience spark your idea for Electriphi?
MG: That experience made it become very apparent that we are on the cusp of the biggest energy transition in history. This led me to start thinking about other ways that the industry will be disrupted. I realized that there are many underserved pockets in the market, such as commercial fleets vehicle applications. This segment includes fleet operators who care about high utilization of their fleets and reduction of operating costs. With this breakthrough I thought about building an end-to-end platform for commercial applications so fleet operators can start planning their transition to electric vehicles.
HD: How did you bridge that idea to your current Electriphi platform?
MG: I met with my friend and eventual co-founder, Sanjay, who told me to “think bigger.” There’s an incredible value in the data, and he suggested building a platform that manages all of the facets related to what fleet owners really care about. This was also a great use case for deploying machine learning and AI-based tools, which makes the platform become smarter over time from the data it receives. For example, factors such the time of day, environmental conditions, battery age, etc. can have a significant impact on charging time and cost. An AI based platform can run thousands of real-time simulations and choose the best algorithm that will save cost and minimize downtime.
HD: That’s great. What else is happening at Electriphi?
MG: We were recently featured in the NACFE (North American Council for Freight) report and besides that we’ve continued to improve our platform and launch our company website. We’ve also hired more engineers and biz dev talent to support our growth. Pretty soon, we’ll be adding a Fleet Energy Cost Simulator on our website. We’re really excited to see where things go from here!
