GIGA: The Ultimate Universal GaN Charger

Tue Apr 5 '22 Announcement
over 2 years ago – Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 06:54:45 AM

Greetings again, 

Just wanted to share this again. 

The campaign officially ended on the 29th of October (and we cannot count any of the months that the campaign was running as part of the delivery months).
Crowdfunding funds are usually sent 14 days after the campaign ends (this is to allow those that might decide to cancel their pre-order and get a refund). 
As you can see from the image below, the first attempt to send us the funds was made by Indiegogo on the 16th of November. Which failed and the second attempt also failed. 

 
As shown above, the funds were officially sent out by Indiegogo on the 25th of November and it took about 5 working days (1 week) for it to finally hit our account.
Remember, this is a crowdfunding project and that means we need the funds from the campaign to pay for the production. 
It took us an additional two weeks to get the money sent to our manufacturer (middle of December). 

Because the production had been halted, it took them a couple of days to even get the production back up. They have started working on other things and it is also important to remember that there was a shortage of IC around the world. 
But we were able to get the necessary IC that we needed to make the GIGA because of the deposits we made when the campaign started. Then the global logistics problem crept in December and January. Chinese New Year happened in February. 
My intention was not to play on your intelligence by sending you excuses here and there. That was never my intention. I am only sending this out to give you an idea of the timeline and everything that had happened since this campaign was launched. 
But again, challenges are part of life and this is going to make VOLTA much stronger for the future of functional products we are building. 

On the other hand because this is a power brick and not just a charging cable. There are lots of regulations that come with it. We had to get clearance and certification with all the certification bodies (US, EU, UK, AU etc). Ever wonder why it took us this long to make any GaN charger? We could have made a 20W or 65W couple of years ago. We didn't because of the regulations and the capital it requires. 
Making the 130W and 200W requires some good capital and extreme care.
We are here for a long term game and we are not newbies in crowdfunding. 
If you check all our previous campaigns, we have always delivered on time and meet expectations. 

There was a reason why we crowdfunded these products, it was simply because we were short of capital required to launch them on our website. As a startup we came here because we believe in the early adopters community. You have helped us come this far since the inception of VOLTA in 2017.

For those that received shipment notifications with USPS tracking numbers that believed they were misled.  You were never misled. The Fulfilment manager in the US is new. She printed multiple Shipping labels beyond the GIGA stock in the US. So once she ran out of the GIGA she couldn’t fulfill the remaining labels she had already printed. So she had to cancel them all. That was why none of those issues occured in the UK and Australia. 


Not sure what to say to you, as your anger towards this project is justified, but we are not here to scam anyone. Money was never my motivation when I started VOLTA. Yes, I love money because of its ability to create resources that can be used to impact the world in a positive way. This is one of the reasons why some of our proceeds go towards providing food, clothing and health care aids to those in need. 



The above image was one of the food distribution projects that our team carried out in the Philippines. I shared this story because of those saying we are trying to scam them due to the delays we have encountered with this project. We have been organising social good events even when we didn't have money in our bank accounts. Why? because I started Volta as a means to create resources to help the less privileged. 

Despite still struggling financially, we are currently working on a project to donate hundreds of treated mosquito nets to some communities in Africa (for Malaria Day this month). 
Photos below are from the 2018 health care project we organised in Africa: 





Finally, I heard back from the factory and they will provide me with the tracking number this week after the Tombs Sweeping holiday. I will share more news later this week.

Thank you for your time. 

Mon Apr 4 '22 Announcement
over 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 04, 2022 at 04:03:40 PM

Hello everyone,

I know a lot of people are extremely frustrated and I completely understand. 
I have seen instances where a backer had to go purchase an inferior alternative charger while waiting to receive their GIGA. This is an extra expense for the backer part and it is quite disappointing. 

I have been waiting for the tracking details of the shipment sent from China to our various fulfillment centres and the factory is yet to provide me the tracking. 

Just so you know the products are ready and I shared the video below with you on the 8th of March (about a month ago). We couldn't have made this up because the products were truly ready and here is the video again: 

The reason for the initial delay was the forced lock-down in Shenzhen due to the new Covid wave in China. After the lockdown was eased last week, I was expecting to receive the tracking number and for some unknown reason the forwarder (the Chinese courier agent) could not get the products shipped out to us. Now they are on 3 days holiday (tomb sweeping holiday). I have been reaching out to them since Thursday and I am yet to get a response. 
The tomb sweeping holiday will end on Wednesday and I am expecting to get some tangible response. I just want to get the tracking numbers, that is what I am expecting from them. 

There wasn't much to share with you, hence why I didn't share anything since last week. So today, I thought I would share this update to let you know that I am here and we are in this together. I want these products delivered to you as soon as possible (more than you want it delivered) because I need them to go live on our website. We are drowning in debts as this delay continues because we invested everything we had on this project. 

Kindly hang in there and continue to bear with us. We need to continue to run the brand, which is why we continue to advertise and sell Spark/2.0 cables on our website. We do not take any of you for granted and we will never take your support for granted. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Sat Mar 26 '22 Announcement
over 2 years ago – Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 08:23:45 AM

Hello everyone, 

Thank you again for your support.

We are now closer to shipping all the orders to the backers. 

Like you might have seen on the news, ALL the Chinese factories were shut down due the new wave of the Covid. All the operations and the plan to have all the products shipped out to our fulfilment offices were altered. 

The good news is that the factory has now resumed operation and we are making progress. All the previous GIGA were not shipped with a packaging box. The packaging is ready and we are pre-packing them. The below screenshots below are what they look like: 





Backers continue to receive their GIGA from the first batch.  See the screenshot below:





I know you all want your GIGA asap and that is exactly what I want. We have spent so much time on this project and the shipment delay is costing us a lot of money. This is a not a good situation for a startup to be in. We truly want to have all the GIGA delivered ASAP so that we can release them on our website. 

Fri Mar 11 '22 Announcement
over 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 01:23:09 PM

Hello again, 

Apologies for too many updates. 
Thought it would be great to share some of these photos with you.

Below is a photo of us about to go Drop off the first batch of orders from our USA office:



Some of these are orders from Indiegogo and also from our website. 

Below is the photo of the front door of our US office:



Below are some of the photos from the VOLTA UK office: 


Main building sign board. 


Mail Box. 


Lift 

Massive shoutout to all of our customers for helping us get here. You are our Super heroes.
Thank you and thank you.

I will share more updates during the week. I will also be inviting you to the official launch of the VOLTA Charger UK. I hope you will be able to make it to the event. It would be nice to meet you in person.

Have a great weekend.

Fri Mar 11 '22 Announcement
over 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 07:02:12 AM

Good day everyone, 

I have some good news. 

We have officially started fulfillment from our USA office. Which means we now have 3 fulfillment hubs (Australia, USA and UK). 

You can test this our by going onto our website and try to check out. You will see all the shipping and courier options that we have available for those in the North America region.


CLICK HERE to TEST Run:

We have also started the fulfilment of the GIGA in the USA. Some of the Backers that got the Save a Spot in the US will start receiving their GiGA Indiegogo orders from next week. 

More Good News, the rest of the GIGA are also ready and will be shipped out to our various offices (Australia, USA and UK). This means we will be able to fulfil all the GIGA and Anchor orders this month (March). I am personally excited and I cannot wait to get these beautiful chargers into your hands. 

I seriously want to find a way to compensate you all for the delay and to show our gratitude for your support. I will find a way to get this done and I want you to know that we appreciate you and we will forever be grateful for your kindness. 
Thank you for helping us get this far. 

I will also be giving everyone of the GIGA backers the opportunity to get additional products at a special discounted rate and this offer will be open once the full scale fulfilment is done.