eMSPs: EV Charging's Missing Link

eMSPs in India: The Missing Link Between Drivers and the Charging Network

When you open an app to charge your EV, do you actually know which company operates the charger you’re using? Probably not and as an EV user, you do not have to. That’s exactly where an eMobility Service Provider (eMSP) comes in.

An eMSP acts as the bridge between EV drivers and charging networks. Instead of worrying about who owns, operates, or installed a particular charging station, drivers can simply use one app to find chargers, start a charging session, manage payments, and receive a single bill.

What Is an eMSP?

An e-Mobility Service Provider (eMSP) is the company that gives EV drivers access to charging, through an app, an RFID card, or an in-car service, across networks they do not directly belong to. It owns the driver relationship: the account, the payment method, the bill, and the support line.

Think of your mobile network. You do not buy a new SIM every time you travel to another city, because your operator has roaming agreements in place. An eMSP does the same for EV charging. It signs roaming agreements with multiple Charge Point Operators (CPOs), the businesses that own and run the chargers, so one driver with one account can charge across dozens of networks.

Let's not confuse an eMSP with a CPO. A CPO owns the hardware and cares whether the charger is working. An eMSP owns the experience and cares whether the driver could find a charger, start it, and pay without friction. In India, many companies play both roles, but the jobs are different, and so are the problems.

How the Roaming Actually Works

The protocol behind EV roaming is OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface). It is often confused with OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol), so here is the difference. OCPP connects a charger to its own CPO's back-office system; it is the conversation inside one network. OCPI connects two businesses, a CPO and an eMSP; it is the conversation between networks.

When a driver starts a session at a charger their eMSP does not own, five things happen behind the charging app:

Find
The CPO shares its charger locations, connector types, tariffs, and live availability with the eMSP over OCPI. That is how the charger shows up in the app.

Authorize
When the driver taps start, the eMSP confirms the driver's token, either in real time or through a whitelist the CPO already holds.

Start
The CPO's back office tells the charger to begin, over OCPP. The charging point itself never talks to the eMSP directly.

Track
Session updates flow back to the eMSP, so the driver can see energy delivered and cost so far.

Settle
When the session ends, the CPO sends a Charge Detail Record (CDR) to the eMSP. The eMSP bills the driver, and the two businesses settle under the terms of their roaming agreement.

The driver gets one seamless experience.

Why India Needs Stronger eMSPs, Not Just More Chargers

India's EV charging network has grown fast. According to the Ministry of Heavy Industries, 67,657 EV chargers were installed across the country as of 7 August 2026, including 1,139 battery-swapping station chargers. In 2022, there were only about 5,000 public charging stations.

But charger count does not solve the driver's actual problem: knowing where a working charger is and being able to use it without a new app every time they cross into another operator's territory. As of May 2026, only about 22,750 of roughly 27,700 public charging stations were operational at any given time. Drivers need an app that shows them which ones.

FAME II supported the sale of 16.72 lakh EVs by June 2026, and PM E-DRIVE has supported another 26.59 lakh. Every one of those EV car owners needs a charging experience that does not fall apart the moment they leave their home city. Without strong eMSP coverage, EV charging in India risks plenty of hardware that drivers still cannot navigate.

What a Good eMSP Delivers

A well-run eMSP typically handles:

A single driver-facing app: one charging app that shows real-time availability, whether a charger is free, occupied, or under maintenance, across multiple CPO networks at once.

Unified billing: one account, one payment method, one bill, regardless of how many different CPOs' chargers a driver actually used that month.

Roaming agreements: commercial and technical deals with CPOs, usually settled through OCPI, that let the eMSP resell access to networks it doesn't own.

Customer support: when something goes wrong mid-charge, the driver calls the eMSP, not the CPO, so support needs to actually resolve issues, not just redirect them.

New business models: subscriptions, fleet billing, and OEM partnerships that go beyond pay-per-session pricing, something CPOs alone rarely offer.

Where does it break?

An eMSP owns the experience, but it does not own the charger. That gap is where most problems live.

Inherited Data Quality: An eMSP can only show what the CPO shares. Stale availability, wrong coordinates, or a missing connector type all will land in the eMSP app that the EV user is on.

Authorisation Delays: Real-time authorisation means a round trip from the charger to the CPO, to the eMSP, and back. On a weak network, a few seconds can feel like a failed session.

Tariff Mismatch: Per-kWh, per-minute, session fees, idle fees, and GST can be interpreted differently by two systems. When the price in the app differs from the price on the bill, the user loses faith.

Settlement Disputes: A missing meter value or an incomplete CDR change what the eMSP bills the driver and what it owes the CPO. That means rejected records, manual reconciliation, and delayed payouts.

Where ChargeIndia Fits In

For an eMSP, coverage is the product. ChargeIndia operates a neutral, OCPI-compliant roaming hub that connects eMSPs and CPOs through a single integration. Instead of building and maintaining a separate connection with every operator, an eMSP integrates once and reaches every CPO on the Hub, with one set of credentials and one consistent way of handling locations, tariffs, sessions, and CDRs.

The crux is neutral. We do not own chargers. We do not manufacture hardware. We do not sell equipment. With the Hub at the core, ChargeIndia helps eMSPs grow coverage faster, helps CPOs reach more drivers, and helps EV roaming in India work like one connected network.

What's Next

As India pushes toward its 2030 EV targets, the winners will not only be the companies that install the most hardware. They will be the ones that make the entire network feel like one system to the person behind the wheel.

CPOs will keep building the physical layer. eMSPs, and the interoperability platforms that connect them, are what turn that hardware into something users can rely on every day, whether they are crossing town or crossing state lines.

India's charging networks, on one platform. Be part of what is next -

chargeindia.com