How a self-taught developer built Pakistan's EV charging app

Why this series exists

Muzamil opens by introducing a new series on Thought Behind Things that features ordinary Pakistanis, people who are relatively unknown, building products around different use cases with AI. His point is that AI has made it possible to start building without being a full-time technologist, as long as you understand a problem closely. “If you are close to a problem statement,” he says, “and you want to solve it for yourself, there are many other people in the world who need the same solution.”

Muzamil explains why he chose this guest. His research process surfaced Fahad’s profile, and the problem matched something from Muzamil’s own life. His mother-in-law had recently called to say they were thinking of buying an electric car because petrol had become expensive, and Muzamil had encouraged it. Her concern was whether a trip from Lahore would be practical. Muzamil asked the question that Fahad’s product answers: how would anyone find out where the charging stations are across Pakistan?

From self-taught coder to freelancer

Fahad’s path into software was not linear. After dropping out before finishing his A-Levels, he began teaching himself to code in 2012. “Since I was very young, I had a big interest in computers,” he says, describing early experiments with Photoshop and software in general. Resources were limited then. He learned PHP and other languages on his own, and later used a free Objective-C course to start on iOS. Because iOS development requires a Mac, he bought one.

In 2015 he created a profile on a freelancing platform, which became his starting point. He has since worked with clients around the world, mostly in the United States and Singapore. Muzamil points out that Fahad has about fifteen years of experience, and Fahad connects that directly to his ability to use AI well. “Somebody who has had experience in this field,” he says, “can do things with AI that someone who does not know how it works cannot.”

Noticing the gap in Pakistan’s charging network

Fahad explains that charging networks are mature in the US, Europe, and the UAE, and widely listed in apps there. Pakistan lagged. Even the stations that existed were not well known, and many owners were nervous. “People were quite nervous,” he says, and there were only a few WhatsApp groups where owners shared information.

He says the idea took shape in late 2025. His first step was to talk to EV owners about what they needed and where they struggled. The starting dataset was a Google Maps list of charging stations in Pakistan, which he moved into a database so he could improve on it.

The central challenge he identifies is connectivity. Internationally, chargers can communicate directly with an app. In Pakistan, many station owners are not technology-focused and are reluctant to connect their hardware to a third-party service. That led him to a community-based model. A driver within about 300 metres of a station can set its status, whether it is working, whether electricity is available, or whether it is broken. “That was the whole point behind ChargePK,” he says. “Make it a community-based app where if you are an EV driver, you should help others as well.”

Building the product in five months

Fahad says the app took about five months to develop. He first considered Flutter, a framework that lets one codebase publish to both the Apple App Store and Google Play, but ran into limits on what he needed. He wanted ChargePK to work across an ecosystem, including Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, Apple Watch, and other wearables, with a smooth, lightweight interface.

He chose to start with iOS, built in Swift. The features he describes include a journey planner, an AI assistant that accepts natural-language queries in Urdu or English (his example is asking for chargers on the route from Lahore to Islamabad), a charging calculator, a range calculator, a built-in community, and an expenses calculator. He says the expenses tool did not exist for EVs in Pakistan, even though petrol cost calculators are common. Android followed about a month later, because around 80 percent of Pakistani users are on Android.

Muzamil asks how much AI contributed to the speed of the build. Fahad’s answer is careful. AI was a large help, he says, but directing it well came from experience. He describes someone with no background asking an AI tool to “make an app” and getting something unusable, compared with someone who understands architecture, interoperability, and database design. He also points to the design work he did himself in Figma, and to the market research he did to decide what would work locally. “Somebody who does not have all of this knowledge,” he says, “might get stuck at some point.” He adds that a product this dependent on maps and location is harder to maintain without understanding its fundamentals, because bugs still come up and need to be diagnosed.

What the numbers show so far

Fahad reports that ChargePK has nearly reached 6,000 users, with around a thousand active daily and a week-on-week retention rate of about 60 percent. He describes these as encouraging figures for a Pakistani app. The product has around 300 reviews across its charging stations, along with check-in features and a rewards programme called “World Pass.”

On market size, Fahad estimates that more than 50,000 electric two- and four-wheel vehicles have been sold in Pakistan, though he is careful to call these rough figures. Muzamil notes that the wave of EV adoption appears to have picked up around 2023, and Fahad points to the growth of Chinese brands, including BYD, as a major driver.

The monetisation question

Muzamil presses on the business model, and Fahad is candid that the app has generated no revenue so far. He does not want to monetise through ads, and specifically dislikes the ad networks that make apps feel cluttered. His reasoning is that a premium experience builds trust, even if he pays for the database and hosting himself in the short term. “I want to look like a premium app,” he says.

His longer-term plan centres on partnerships. He says the app is working with a large Pakistani company that is also building charging stations, and an MoU is close to being signed. Under that arrangement, the company’s stations would appear on ChargePK, with offers such as discounts for users who pay through the app. He also describes a planned in-app wallet for paying for charging, and a reservation feature. He flags an obstacle he has already met: station owners are wary of new technology, and in a market where people expect free services, paying for something digital is a hard sell.

Muzamil suggests several directions, including a reservation layer for busy metro stations, a data business based on where demand is showing up, and a model that helps investors identify locations where charging stations would be profitable. Fahad responds that a platform like this could generate revenue across several parts of the ecosystem, though he has not yet explored all of them in depth.

Why partnerships matter more than users

Near the end, Muzamil argues that at this stage partnerships matter more than the customer base. Fahad agrees that the product needs collaborators who can help build the ecosystem. He describes a future where charging stations connect to the app, so drivers can see live availability before they travel, and station owners gain customers and data that justify further investment.

He also wants the app to feel fun as well as useful, which is why he has added community posts that users can share to Instagram, along with the rewards programme. He plans to keep the core service free for drivers in the near future while the infrastructure grows.

A closing call to the audience

Muzamil closes by inviting viewers who own EVs to try the app, share feedback, and report bugs constructively, ideally by contacting the founder on LinkedIn to explain what they think is broken and how it could improve. He says Fahad’s stated goal of building a world-class product is what he most admires. “In Pakistan,” Muzamil says, “we build things and then do not care about how they are designed.” He mentions other Pakistani apps he considers poorly designed, and says ChargePK is a different example.

The episode ends with an invitation for viewers to share their experiences with EV charging infrastructure, and a note that the series will continue with more builders working on specific problems.