Image: ChargeZoneEach highway fast-charging station will entail a minimum investment of 10 million rupees (approximately €92,500). The company is adopting a franchise model for this initiative, under which dealers, including landowners, entrepreneurs, businesses and institutions, will invest in the charging stations, while it will handle development, commissioning and operations.ChargeZone has tied up with the State Bank of India to help dealers secure financing for the charging stations. The bank will offer loans ranging from 1 million to 100 million rupees at subsidised rates, with repayment periods of up to seven years, under its EV Mitra scheme curated specifically to support enterprises developing public charging infrastructure.The new fast-charging stations will have capacities ranging from 500 kW to 1.5 MW, allowing them to cater to both passenger vehicles and heavy-duty commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks. ChargeZone has already deployed fast-charging stations along several key highway routes, including Delhi–Mumbai, Delhi–Chandigarh, Bengaluru–Hyderabad, Bengaluru–Chennai, Mumbai–Hyderabad, Mumbai–Bengaluru and Vizag–Chennai.Commenting on the new project, ChargeZone founder and CEO Kartikey Hariyani said: “As EV adoption in India expands beyond cities into highways and freight corridors, the need for high-capacity, reliable charging infrastructure is becoming more critical.”“The DOCO (Dealer Owned, Company Operated) model allows us to accelerate this build-out by enabling wider participation, while ensuring consistent operations across the network,” he added.Based in Vadodara, a Tier-II city in the western state of Gujarat, ChargeZone operates India’s largest EV charging network and is also present in the UAE. The company has set up more than 15,000 charging points across more than 1,200 locations in the two countries.Source: Information via e-mail