Who is Reefilla?
Reefilla is a startup that makes charging your EV vehicle possible anytime, anywhere. Founded in Turin in 2021 by Gabriele Bergoglio, Marco Bevilacqua and Pietro Balda, we first connected in March 2021.
Reefilla works by bringing the EV charging to your vehicle, instead of having a “stationary” network of charging points. This makes the electric car ownership experience even better, especially for those who live in big busy cities such as Milan and Turin.
When we first talked to Gabriele, Marco and Pietro in the spring of 2021, their priorities were:
- Having a tool to monitor the charge level of their users’ vehicles
- Manage the logistics of the charging process
They wanted to be up and running as soon as possible, so we dove into research right away. During our initial workshop, we zeroed in on the customer journey and concluded that even though it was important to allow users to manually book a charge… the key issue was managing the logistics around the actual charging service.
How we implemented this
We used Bubble to create a web interface where users can request a manual charge. New website visitors are also allowed to create a profile and add their electric cars to the platform.
We used Xano and Retool to develop a tool that allows the Reefilla team to analyse the battery levels of every user’s vehicle, plan a charging journey and chart it on Google Maps. Google Maps is then also used by the operational team to visit each vehicle.
Our work didn’t end there: during the sprint, we also designed and implemented a series of admin and user notifications, sent via email, to improve the experience.
On the Reefilla admin side, the team is notified when:
- A new manual charge request is received
- A vehicle battery level is too low
On the user side, each user is notified when:
- Their vehicle is being charged
- Their vehicle is about to be charged, with an option to cancel the charge
After the initial workshop and a two-week sprint, Reefilla was ready to test this MVP with real vehicles and real users.
The team says about their experience with us:
“We engaged Francesco from Lateral Studio a few months after opening our business. In a few short weeks, we were able to launch our MVP to test and validate the market. We found a very helpful partner in Lateral, from both the technical and strategic standpoint. Their results-oriented and flexible approach were great to work with.”
Pietro Balda, co-founder
In the upcoming months, Reefilla called us back for another sprint to change the battery monitoring system and expland the MVP. Thanks to Bubble, Xano and Retool a week was sufficient to complete the work.
In July 2022, thanks to its rapid iteration and growth, Reefilla raised €1M from A11 Venture and other angels. We’re proud to have been part of their journey so far!
Project Budget: €8000
Team: product manager, Low-Code developer, part-time designer
Number of sprints: 2
