Winner Profile
Adrian Keen
InstaVolt
In 2016, it was clear that electric vehicles (EVs) were the future of mobility. But given the rate of adoption – barely 37,000 plug-in cars were sold in the UK that year – you’d have been forgiven for thinking they weren’t the near future. A key reason was the sparse and unreliable charging infrastructure: it took a brave motorist to buy an EV without being sure they could keep it juiced.
InstaVolt was founded to help solve that problem. “We believe people will buy electric cars, but they won’t if the infrastructure isn’t there. It was really an opportunity to professionalise the public charging experience to give people
the confidence to make the change,” explains Adrian Keen, who joined the fledgling business in 2017 as CFO, becoming CEO two years later.
Fast forward to today, and InstaVolt is the UK’s largest owner-operator of rapid public chargers, with 1,500 in strategic locations around the country, or approximately 15% of the market. Its revenues hit £18.6m in its 2022-3 financial year, a more than 20-fold increase since 2020-1.
The fact that a business dedicated to decarbonisation tops this year’s Growth Index as the UK’s fastest-growing company is both a sign of our times and a testament to the financial rewards of good growth.
So how did InstaVolt do it?
Keen explains that InstaVolt made the strategic decision to play at the rapid end of a charging spectrum – its latest chargers are a potent 160kW – in public spaces. “We don’t have an at-home charging business. We’re really serving the driver who’s stopping for less than 45 minutes, wanting to add 100 miles to the tank while they have a comfort break and a coffee. Sometimes it’s just a five-minute splash-and-dash on their way home,” Keen says.
This in turn led to concentrating on short dwell-time, high-footfall spaces, particularly near motorway junctions. InstaVolt’s big break came just before the pandemic in 2020, when it signed long-term partnerships with McDonald’s and Costa Coffee to install chargers in their car parks.
“We actually found ourselves adjacent to a number of Costa Coffee stores by chance, and thought we could have a conversation, and that ultimately led to a more formal partnership. With McDonald’s, it was knocking on doors. I just thought they would be perfect – they’re all over the country, everyone knows them, accessible locations, great facilities, all-day dining – so I was thrilled when they called and said we were their chosen partner. It put charging into the mainstream,” Keen says.
InstaVolt’s business model is based on arbitrage on the electricity price, and its premium pricing reflects the cost of sourcing, installing and maintaining top-in-class chargers. It covers the full installation costs and pays rent to site owners, which now range from retail parks, local authorities, small supermarkets, gyms and some Starbucks franchises through to local farms and family businesses. But Keen says long-term partners benefit equally from improved footfall, a better customer experience and the ability to contribute to some of their ESG goals.
A clear competitive position
InstaVolt has long been unusual in keeping its network open to anyone. You don’t need to sign up or download its app to use a charging point, although there are perks to doing so, for example around finding your nearest available chargers.
“To the best of my knowledge, we were the first network in the world to offer contactless payment at the charge point. Even back in 2016, drivers were complaining of needing a dozen apps and three RFID cards for public charging, it was a nightmare. We thought it was ludicrous. You don’t buy petrol like this, or coffee. It’s got to be easier,” Keen says.
“I often get challenged that this means we’re not capturing user data. I’m sure that will evolve, but today we need to give drivers confidence that they can turn up, tap, and it works.”
Keen also points to the quality of InstaVolt’s customer service – it was the first UK network to have a 24/7 call centre – and its unparalleled maintenance as key ways it differentiates itself among drivers. “We monitor the health of our network in real time, there are screens everywhere. We also have some predictive elements, so when something might become an issue we can investigate and dispatch an engineer to prevent a fault. We have a wonderful reputation that has been earned by hard work,” Keen says.
This reputation is proving critical amid fierce and rising competition in the sector, which is also pushing up salaries and making it harder to find talent.
Keen welcomes the newer market entrants, many of which he says have exciting and innovative models (“it keeps us on our toes”). Some are trying to gain rights to premium charging locations by offering extremely generous rents, but Keen believes InstaVolt’s track record and strong financial position mean it is the stable partner “who will still be there in 10-15 years”.
Investment and growth prospects
The company owes its financial position to its acquisition in early 2022 by Sweden’s EQT, one of the world’s largest private equity companies, with a focus on the green transition. “EQT has this incredible team of people around the world. I can
immediately mobilise their knowledge base like an extension of my own team. And of course they bring serious credibility, which helps in the fight for talent and for the best sites,” Keen says.
The investment also prompted Keen and the team to consider ways to be even more ambitious. Not only does InstaVolt intend to hit a target of 10,000 rapid chargers in the UK by 2030, it has also launched in Iceland, and will launch in Spain and Portugal later this year, with a concurrent European target of 5,000 chargers.
“We looked at these markets and thought they were very pro-EV, with lots of government support and incentives, but not much infrastructure, so there was an opportunity for us to play a big role. If there are opportunities for partnerships or maybe an acquisition we’ll look at those, and the same is true in our existing market as well,” Keen says, adding that the UK needs approximately 60-70,000 rapid public chargers by the end of the decade to keep pace with electrification goals, so there’s plenty of headroom for growth.
“We’ve got a pipeline of thousands, and partnerships with big brands that can keep us busy for years, but we’re only just getting started. There are huge segments that haven’t been explored yet, where we’d love to work. It’s really exciting. Everywhere you stop your car is an opportunity to charge.”
