How ChargePK Was Built: Fahad Hassan on the Thought Behind Things Podcast

By ChargePK · 20 October 2026 · 5 min read · ChargePK Blog

ChargePK’s founder Fahad Hassan sat down with Muzammil Hassan on the Thought Behind Things podcast, one of Pakistan’s biggest conversations on startups and technology, to talk about the app behind this website: where it came from, how one person shipped it across four platforms in five months with AI doing the heavy lifting, and what the EV wave in Pakistan actually looks like from inside it.

The short version of the story

Fahad dropped out of A-Levels and started coding in 2012, then spent a decade freelancing on Upwork building for other people. ChargePK began the way most honest products do, with a personal problem: range anxiety in a country where chargers existed but nobody could tell you where they were, whether they worked, or what they charged. The answer became a community driven map first, then a full app.

The part that gives the episode its title: the entire thing, iOS, Android, CarPlay, Android Auto and Apple Watch, was built solo in about five months, with AI tools compressing work that would normally take a team. As the episode puts it, the fifteen years of coding experience did not become unnecessary; they became the thing that made the AI useful, steering architecture and design decisions while the tools produced the volume.

Where to jump in

What the conversation says about the product

A few threads from the episode explain how ChargePK works the way it does:

• Community driven data. The map lives on drivers checking in, reporting rates and confirming chargers work, which is why the app rewards contributions instead of running ads.
• Native on purpose. The easy route was one webview wrapped in an app store icon. ChargePK shipped native on every platform, CarPlay and Watch included, because a utility you use at 11 pm on a motorway has no room for jank.
• No ads, B2B instead. Monetization comes from working with charging station operators, not from selling drivers’ attention, so the driver side stays free and clean.
• Over 6,000 drivers were using the app at the time of recording, with retention the episode calls unusually high for a utility.

Watch, then kick the tyres

The outro asks viewers to test the app and send feedback, and that invitation stands here too: the ChargePK app is free on iOS and Android, the live map runs in any browser, and anything broken or missing lands straight with the founder via the support page.

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