Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
EV charger buyers: who decides at a housing society, a fleet depot and a developer's project
An EV charger enquiry can come from a housing society, a fleet, a developer or a commercial site. Each has a different decision-maker and compares different things. Here is who decides, and what to send each.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
Three enquiries arrive in one week. A housing society secretary wants chargers in the basement. A delivery fleet wants its depot charged between shifts. A developer's MEP consultant wants a specification for a tower still being built. All three are EV charger sales, and they compare different things. The society argues about who pays for the electricity. The fleet counts vehicles off the road. The developer buys for a handover years away. So find out first which buyer you are speaking to, then send what that buyer compares.
Who decides, and what each buyer compares
A common mistake is one brochure for every buyer: power rating, connector type, charging time, a photograph of the charger on a wall. That brochure answers the fleet's first question and few of the others. Read across this table before writing anything.
| Buyer | Who decides | What they compare | Their first question | What to send first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Housing society | Managing committee, at a meeting | Who pays, how each user is billed, who maintains it | "Who pays for the electricity?" | One plain page for the committee, and a small first phase |
| Fleet operator | Operations head or fleet manager | Vehicles charged per shift, repair response, spares | "What happens when one fails?" | A depot plan built on their shifts |
| Developer | MEP consultant writes, project head and purchase decide | The specification, provision for later chargers, cost per parking slot | "Does it meet our spec?" | Datasheet, drawings and a provision plan |
| Office, hotel or mall | Facility or admin manager, sometimes the owner | Whether visitors or staff will use it, and who runs it | "Do we have to manage this?" | A note on how sessions are run and billed |
| Charge point operator | Its technical and purchase team | Price per unit, reliability, whether it works with their software | "Which protocol does it speak?" | Technical file and a pilot offer |
The last column is the useful one. Each buyer stops reading at the point where their own question is not answered. On the first call, find out which row you are in with one question: "Who else has to agree before this is ordered?" A secretary says the committee. A fleet manager says finance. A consultant says the project head. The answer tells you what to write next.
A housing society decides in a meeting, not on your call
The resident who rang you owns an EV and wants a charger. Other residents do not, and some will object. They worry about parking bays, about the society's electricity bill, and about safety in a closed basement. None of that is settled on your sales call. It is settled at a committee meeting, and sometimes a general body meeting after that.
So write for the meeting. One page, in plain words, answers four things. How is each user billed? Who maintains the charger? What must the society arrange? And how does it begin with two chargers and add more later? The connection is the hard part. Whether a charger can run from the common supply or from a resident's own meter, and how it is billed, is decided by the local electricity company. Rules differ by state and change, so tell the committee to check with its electricity company and its own adviser rather than taking your word for it.
Answer safety questions with what your product does, in its datasheet terms. Do not answer them with reassurance. A committee note can be as short as this; fill every bracket from your own terms:
EV charging: note for the managing committee
Who pays: each resident, by units used on the charger, shown on a statement [method to be confirmed with the electricity company]
Billing: [meter or app], statement sent to the secretary
Maintenance: [maker] services the chargers; a fault is logged by [route] and attended by [named engineer]
Phase one: 2 chargers, bays [numbers], the society supplies [point or cable run]; more bays added only if residents ask
A fleet counts vehicles off the road
A fleet manager has vehicles that earn only when they move, and does not compare chargers on price first. The comparison is how many vehicles each charger turns around between shifts, and what happens on a morning when one is dead.
Ask for the fleet's numbers before you quote: vehicles at the depot, shift timings, the hours each vehicle stands idle, the battery sizes. Then send a depot plan, not a price list. Say how many chargers the plan needs, which spare you would keep on site, and who comes when one fails. If you have no service engineer in that city, say so, or do not take the order. A fleet that loses a morning's deliveries to a dead charger can tell other fleets in town.
A developer buys for a handover years away
The developer's consultant writes the specification early. The purchase comes much later in the build. By then the buyer is asking about provision as much as chargers: conduits, panel space and load kept aside so more bays can be added after residents move in.
Two things catch makers out here. The warranty start date matters, because a charger installed long before handover may sit unused for a year. And the handover file matters, because the developer has to pass test papers, manuals and warranty cards to the residents' association. Keeping those papers ready is covered in test certificates and documents a buyer's engineer asks for.
For example: a Cherlapally charger maker and a Gachibowli society
Imagine a small maker of AC wall-box chargers in the Cherlapally industrial area, Hyderabad. The details are illustrative. A resident of a large society in Gachibowli invited it to pitch. The maker sent its fleet brochure, full of power ratings and charging times.
At the committee meeting, the treasurer asked who would pay for the electricity and how a resident would be billed. Another member asked who would come when a charger stopped working on a Sunday. Nobody from the maker was there. The brochure answered neither question, and a charge point operator offering to run the chargers itself got the committee's attention instead.
The maker went back with a different approach. It wrote one page for the committee on billing, maintenance and a two-charger start. Its engineer attended the next meeting with a charger on a board and the billing screen on a phone, and answered the safety questions in writing afterwards. The committee chose the two-charger start, but cut it to one bay at first because two residents objected to losing parking, and the second charger waited a further quarter.
Where to start, and where not to
Pick the buyer your product and your service reach suit. AC wall-box chargers in small numbers suit housing societies and offices. Higher-power chargers suit fleets and highway sites, where service response decides the next order. Developers suit a maker who can wait a long time between specification and purchase order. Skip them if your cash cannot.
And with one service engineer, start in one city.
This week, take the last three enquiries you received and mark each against the table, then write the missing first answer for the one that is closest to an order. Deciding which buyers and cities come first is go-to-market strategy, and chargers sit alongside panels, switchgear and cables on the page for electrical equipment manufacturers. If you are deciding which of these buyers to chase first, tell us what you need.
Related services
