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Akshay Singhal on Building Log9 Materials: India’s EV Battery Bet
400 Plays2 years ago
How did Akshay Singhal turn Log9 from a dorm-room nanotech experiment into a battery-tech player reshaping India’s EV future? In this Founder Thesis episode, we unpack the science, strategy, and hard lessons behind building tropicalized EV batteries in India’s heat and hustle—where battery packs can be 50% of an EV’s cost.
From IIT Roorkee labs to Bengaluru’s IISc ecosystem, Akshay charts the shift from graphene R&D to fast-charging, long-life battery platforms built for Indian duty cycles. He breaks down lithium-ion fundamentals with vivid analogies, explains why LTO and LFP chemistries fit India better than NMC, and shares how Log9 navigated COVID by launching “Corona Oven” in 14 days—then accelerated its EV battery go-to-market. In this candid conversation with host Akshay Datt, you’ll hear the mission (“materials science for the tropical world”), the ops realities of cell vs. pack manufacturing, funding milestones, and what it takes to validate deeptech in the market. If you care about EVs, battery safety, charging speed, and Make-in-India manufacturing, this one’s loaded with insights—and scars. Also: Akshay’s profile highlights “Previously scaled Log9 ($13M revenue, $50M raised),” giving added context to the journey.
• How Log9 evolved from graphene research to a battery business designed for India’s climate and usage patterns.
• A simple, unforgettable explainer of how lithium-ion batteries work—and why heat and charge rates cause degradation.
• LTO vs. LFP vs. NMC: the trade-offs, why LTO/LFP win in Indian two- and three-wheeler fleets, and the safety/fast-charge edge.
• The capex, tech access, and scale barriers in cell manufacturing—and why pack assembly is a different game.
• The COVID pivot: shipping a UV-based “Corona Oven” in two weeks, building distribution, and keeping the team intact.
• Funding, partnerships, and validation loops that helped Log9 de-risk deeptech and accelerate commercialization.
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Visit founderthesis.com for more founder stories
00:00 – Why Battery Costs Matter (EV India)
05:15 – Founder Journey: Roorkee to Startup
10:40 – Graphene 101 for Batteries
21:55 – Shift to Bengaluru & IISc Advantage
41:12 – How Lithium-ion Batteries Work
47:29 – LTO vs LFP: India’s Best Fit
1:03:58 – COVID Pivot: “Corona Oven”
1:13:44 – Scaling Cell Manufacturing in India
#AkshaySinghal #Log9Materials #EVBatteriesIndia #LithiumIon #LTO #LFP #Graphene #BatteryManufacturingIndia #ElectricVehiclesIndia #EVMobility #TwoWheelerEV #ThreeWheelerEV #BatteryTech #FastCharging #Amphion #NexMile #MakeInIndia #CleanMobility #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt
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Transcript
Introduction to Akshay Singhal and Log9
00:00:00
Speaker
By the way, this is Akshay Singhan. I am the founder and CEO of Clock Night.
00:00:15
Speaker
One of the hardest problems in the electric vehicle space is the battery tech. The battery can account for as much as 50% of the cost of an EV, which makes this one of the most critical pieces in the EV puzzle. In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt is talking with
Log9's Funding and Manufacturing Plans
00:00:32
Speaker
Dr. Akshay Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of Log9, which is building battery technology for Bharat.
00:00:39
Speaker
Dr. Singal's background in fundamental research on material sciences makes him uniquely suited to crack this problem. Log9 has raised almost $30 million till date from some incredible investors, including Amara Raja, which is a publicly listed battery company.
Inspiration and Early Research in Graphene
00:00:54
Speaker
This is helping it to build and scale up one of India's most ambitious EV battery manufacturing plants. Stay tuned and follow the Founder Thesis Podcast on any audio streaming app to learn about the future of business in India.
00:01:14
Speaker
It's a material science company which is focused towards energy storage technologies, particularly developed for India and the tropical world. I was quite drawn towards research and that happened primarily because of two things. One is that I like to do research projects from the first year itself and all of it. And then in my second year, what happened was at one of the family auctions, I met one of my grandfather who was a scientist in National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi.
00:01:39
Speaker
And he devoted all his life to research, and he was a material scientist himself. And he said that, OK, I can come to Roorkee every weekend, and maybe we can start doing some experiments in one of the labs if you can arrange. So I spoke to one of the head of the departments of our technology center, and then we were able to get an empty lab. He actually brought some equipment and chemicals on his own expense.
00:02:02
Speaker
to the lab. He started doing research over there. So because he was working in our technology for the last 40 years, and he had set up our lab in his own house in Delhi. So a lot of that equipment and material came to Roorkee and started working on that. So that's how my initiation into material science research actually started. Then around the same time, there was a professor who later became my supervisor for PhD as well.
00:02:24
Speaker
He joined IIT Roorkee from University of Florida, US. He completed PhD and joined over here and he and his wife who also joined IIT Roorkee at the same time. Both their PhDs were around Graphene and that year which caught my fancy and I started to work with them as well. So that's how this got
Conceptualization and Foundation of Log9
00:02:41
Speaker
limited.
00:02:41
Speaker
The whole concept of starting a venture around this happened in Canada. So I was in Canada for three months for my third year internship. And while that was the most idle time of my life, I don't think I have spent so many casualties that stretch in the last between 20 years. So that gave me a kind of option to think about what to do in life and how to go about making a career and all of it. And one thing I realized was that
00:03:04
Speaker
While I'm drawn towards research, but academic research is just too inconsequential and boring, at least than what I saw around me. And I said that if I have to do some meaningful work, then there has to be a venture which can support new inventions, new products, and that can fuel more research happening going forward. It was Canada where Lockhine was born in that sense. And then the moment I came back, we started a lab in my backyard in the urban itself, and that's how it started.
00:03:29
Speaker
So fourth year of IT, you were mostly working on the log night, like setting it up. Yes, mostly. And it was very initial days. We didn't even have a company or anything. It was just a small lab that we set up. And just my father was good enough to buy some equipment. So we put it out, trying out a bunch of things, doing all other research and protect itself on the campus. And then around the same time, the Incubation Center came along. So the director was, by that night, Praditya Banerjee was there.
00:03:57
Speaker
And he was very focused towards getting an incubation sale in IT routine. So that came around. We were the first company to get incubated there. So we grew the incubation sale also grew. And so that's how it started. So we finally incorporated the company in April of 2015, which was just one month after my graduation.
00:04:15
Speaker
Amazing. And so that one year when you were tinkering around, what kind of problem statement did you have in mind or what were you doing with that? There must have been some focus area. Yeah, there was about basically stabilizing the graphene production process. The idea was to take this material, develop processes, optimize them so that we can produce it at scale, customize it.
Understanding Graphene's Properties and Challenges
00:04:35
Speaker
That was the whole idea, just understanding the basic traits of business as well. And I remember buying the whole Companies Act
00:04:43
Speaker
and then going through it page by page. So even that happened while many would argue that it was never required. But yeah, that also happened. Wow. Amazing. You have the mind of a researcher, basically. Amazing. OK. So give me like a graphene 101. What is graphene? Where does it get used? And graphene.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's a very new material. I think in the whole family of carbon materials also, you have graphite, you have coal, you have diamond. So there are various forms of carbon. So they came around carbon nanotubes, which came around in the 90s. And then graphene is the latest entrant in that family, so to speak. Graphene is also naturally occurring, like say a diamond is naturally occurring.
00:05:24
Speaker
It is artificially occurring or produced material and it is basically the simplest way of producing graphene is chiseling down graphite. So basically graphite has a layer structure so basically what you can imagine that you take a stack of printing paper like a four-size sheets that stack is resembles graphite and if you pull out one sheet out of it that is basically graphene.
00:05:45
Speaker
Basically down graphite to make graphene, that's the most simplest way. There are other more complicated ways, more pristine ways to do it, assembling atom part M and all of those things. But this is how you can explain it in the simplest form. Graphene manufacturing is not cheap, so that's why you were trying to figure out how to scale it up.
00:06:02
Speaker
Nobody was practically doing it in India. It was a very limited deal globally speaking. Not many applications have been figured out and still it is in its nascent stage where people are still trying to figure out more and more use cases and how we can be incorporated across things. So that's what we were trying to do in the first two years of the venture. And one thing that we realized in the first two years is that there's no point of just setting graphene as a material. So you would work on using this material to create products. And that's only when a successful venture can be built.
00:06:31
Speaker
One question before we come to 17. What are the use cases of graphene? What can it be used for? It's like a hard substance, so what is it like? It's a very versatile material in that sense, so it cannot be corroded, so it's not non-corrosive, it can be refractive layer.
00:06:46
Speaker
It is very highly conducting so it can be used in semiconductor chips or in electronic industry and stuff like that. Then because it is conducting it finds application in battery materials and battery technologies in that sense and also because it is a very thin layer material so it has very high catalytic properties so that it further enables battery work and any kind of electro. What do you mean by catalytic properties?
00:07:10
Speaker
Basically, a catalyst is something which enables a reaction to happen faster. For reactions to happen faster, you need to reduce the barrier for things to come together. So in the context of viral stuff on the internet, let's say a matchmaker, everybody would have seen Indian matchmaking web series. So a matchmaker is a catalyst in the whole process of bringing two people together.
00:07:33
Speaker
Why it's a substrate or basically a platform where two items can come together and react and kind of form your product. So it's a very good catalyst in that way. And hence it can be used in various kind of electrochemical or battery-based technologies. And you were also doing your PhD from IT at the same time as you were working
Initial Applications and Strategic Decisions for Log9
00:07:55
Speaker
on log noises.
00:07:55
Speaker
We were a lot of firsts in 2015 for IIT Roorkee and for us as well. So the first time where Roorkee was allowing somebody to have a startup as well as join a PhD program at the same time. And many people were not even able to fathom this concept. So I still remember one of the days receiving a call from my head of department in my research department and he called me.
00:08:18
Speaker
and they started thrashing me that you were doing a podcast, you have a company listed in your name and then at the same time you were registered, you were sent for the student over here. So then I had to go and bring out the incubation policy of the campus which was drafted 4-5 years ago but nobody was aware of it.
00:08:37
Speaker
one shanty little office in that historic building. And I got that copy, gave it to him, then wrote an email to the director copying him, saying that this is all happening with proper protocol and process of the campus. So that happened. But the primary reason for joining PhD was very different. It was not to actually go PhD. The concept was that while I was able to get some support from my family to start the business, but I had to manage my own personal expenses as well.
00:09:07
Speaker
And PhD at that time provided a 30,000 rupees stipend per month. So that was quite good at that age. And that was the primary reason why I joined PhD. And also another reason was that as a student, you can get access to many more labs on campus. But he was already graduated. OK, amazing. And before you moved to Bangalore, 2017, you moved to Bangalore. But before that, what kind of use cases were you looking at? I can see that you built a filter for cigarettes.
00:09:34
Speaker
lot of weird stuff like including filter for cigarettes, a water filtration membrane, a air filtration. So there were a lot of these kind of weird applications that we were looking at. The concept was one simple one was to look at things which can potentially lead to saving climate change and save carbon emissions, beautify things. So that was the whole idea that we look at applications which have a kind of climate angle to it.
00:09:58
Speaker
And was you going to build an IP and sell that intellectual property? Was it an intellectual property business or did you actually want to manufacture also? I think the concept was not very clear at that point of time. And I was not reserved to do one versus the other. A lot of people did suggest at that time that why do we want to go into manufacturing and doing these things? Why don't we just make technology, keep on making technology and licensing them out?
00:10:24
Speaker
Which sounds like a very rosy picture, but it doesn't happen that often and it's far more difficult to be able to do it in the first place. Because think is that your credibility on technology comes with market success. And without having any product of your own in the market, nobody will be willing to give you that credibility that, okay, I developed actually works, it has actual benefit in all of those things.
00:10:49
Speaker
So, you really need to get your hands dirty before you think about licensing and stuff like that. I think that's the experience I got. 2017, did
Relocation to Bangalore and Collaboration with IISc
00:10:57
Speaker
the plan change? Why did you move to Bangalore? So, 17, the move happened. Obviously, Roorkee was a good stepping stone in that way, but obviously, a venture of this type cannot be built in Roorkee. Obviously, the geographical constraint that Roorkee has to offer. Initially, we thought that why don't we move to Delhi, but sorry to all Delhiites, but I don't like Delhi at all.
00:11:17
Speaker
six months over there. And no, that was not the vibe I was looking for. And also, at the same time, I again went to Canada for a conference and there I met the chairman of our technology center at University of Science, Bangalore. Pratap was the founding chairman there. And I met him, I told him what kind of venture we have built. And he was kind enough to invite me to ISE and say that why don't you visit, see what we have.
00:11:42
Speaker
And they will be more than happy to support an individual like you to build this kind of a venture in India. So I went to Bangalore for a minute. I came back and what I saw was just phenomenal. So they had one of the, like, it was the most advanced and state of the art, now technology facility in the entire country and at par with any good center globally as well.
00:12:04
Speaker
So it was 300 odd crore facility under one roof having every house. And I was getting access to that facility for peanuts for practically 50,000, one lakh rupees a year, something like that. That was a dream come true in that sense. And then we started to work with various professors also there. So the relationship kind of developed very quickly and got into advanced stages very quickly because of the kind of repo that I was able to create with Dr. Uthipathap.
00:12:30
Speaker
So that kind of limited the move to Bangalore and I think it took us only three months to pack everything up and move. So who is we here? Are you still like a solo researcher trying to figure out some use case or do you have other? By the time we had one or two people.
00:12:46
Speaker
So we had our first team member who joined us in 2016. So he was, so he graduated from MIT and then he was a researcher at IIT Bombay. And so I met him in a conference in 2016 and he joined me and IIT Rokhi itself. Karthik, my co-founder, was also there at that time. Our third co-founder, Pankaj, who was our advisor that do lock nine, he was there, but he was not making the move. He was still in Delhi. And he was actually making a move to Kochi at that time because of his another venture.
00:13:12
Speaker
So all of that was happening. So a bunch of two, three people, that's all we had at that time. And so I decided that if we really have to grow the team, the right talent will also be easier to find in Bangalore and we are getting access to resources. I think that move was good in that sense. But how were you paying the salaries? You were just getting that 30,000 internship stipend.
00:13:34
Speaker
Because we were the first company in Cuba, so we got a small, very small investment from the campus itself. That was okay. It lasts us during the two years in Turkey. And my family also put in something. But then just before moving to Bangalore, we closed our first investment round. A bunch of friends in Delhi led by Shahid Tikuk, who has been the earliest investor in that sense. And so with that money being available, we made a move to Bangalore.
00:14:00
Speaker
And what was your pitch here that you will build something using graphene? I think at that time, the one product which we had finished was the secret filter. But luckily, they always realized that this is not the ultimate potential of the company. This team has more to offer with graphene and the materials understanding there is a bigger potential out there.
00:14:21
Speaker
Okay. So tell me the journey now, once you're at ISC in Bangalore and you have access to what's your career facility? Yeah. So we were not stationed inside the campus. So we were just the campus. We were half a kilometer outside campus and we set up a small office over there. And then we would, I think almost every day, one or the other person from the team would be at ISC doing some experimentation, testing, whatever it is. And then we had, so most of the.
00:14:47
Speaker
fabrication or processing or synthesis kind of experimental work used to happen in our office or R&D center which was also in ISD and most of the testing and characterization we would use ISD for and then we also started doing certain projects. What do you mean by characterization?
00:15:03
Speaker
And then whatever you produce has been produced at the right quality, right type. What are you guys actually looking to get this?
Shift to Battery Technology for Indian Conditions
00:15:11
Speaker
You cannot just observe it with an open eye. You have to really put it under a very significant microscope to see the structure is right and the properties are right. So all of that testing characterization, as we call it, was happening at ISE and the synthesis workers mostly being that activity sector, which is it.
00:15:29
Speaker
And you said you were doing some projects. Yeah, so we started doing certain projects with various professors in ISE. We applied for grants. There are various sub-government schemes. But the only thing was that I think with Pankaj's experience in his previous company, it was clear that we cannot be dependent on grant versus the business because you apply for a grant today. While the intent of these grants are right, the process takes forever. And while you apply this here, maybe it will come through a year and a half, two years later. So that happened. But with that experience, at least you're not depending on these grants and they came when they came.
00:15:59
Speaker
Okay, so had you started working on battery by now or were you still experiment? Within six months of moving to Bangalore, we started working on battery. So the battery has got our attention around that time. And also one thing was really live that given that we want to focus our energy towards climate change.
00:16:16
Speaker
Doing anything around energy, whether generation, storage, or whatever, is the best bet because energy contributes, whatever energy consumption contributes 70 odd percent of all the carbon emissions in the world. So if you're swapping for energy, then you're getting the biggest impact from a carbon emissions perspective.
00:16:35
Speaker
became a very obvious choice from that context. And one thing that we were particularly looking at is why battery search is not happening in India, and why the other batteries which are being developed globally, why are they not able to perform in the same fashion in India as they are being able to do so in Europe, China, US, or wherever.
00:16:55
Speaker
These two questions we were trying to answer at that time and we realized that our conditions are very different, the temperatures are very high, types of vehicles that we have is very different, road conditions are different, usage patterns are different and then hence technologies need to be customized for these operating conditions.
00:17:12
Speaker
And at the same time, we also have to be conscious of what materials and what trauma the supply chain is available within the country. So that we are not just climbing one ditch, which is basically buying oil from the Middle East and falling into another ditch, which is buying batteries from China tomorrow. So the idea was to solve for these two things at the same time.
00:17:31
Speaker
There are two concepts I want you to like, give me a one-on-one, like an explanation. First is nanoscience and nanomaterials. And second is batteries. So whichever one you want to start with first, you can. So I think the best way to understand why nanotechnology is important, why it works is, so let's say you take a jar and you start putting pebbles inside the jar, or let the chocolate, like a farad of sugar and over chocolate, you're putting, stuffing it up in the jar.
00:17:59
Speaker
And now what you do is that you take out all those chocolates and then you want to put one chocolate each into one single jar. Maybe smaller sized jar, but one single jar. So what you will notice is the amount of glass, let's say, for the jar required when you are storing them in individual jars would be much higher because over each chocolate into a different jar. Whether they just stuck them all together, it is one single jar. The amount of glass would be so less.
00:18:25
Speaker
So, the most important thing that happens when you are dealing with nanomaterials is that instead of dealing with a bulk material which has one single surface, which is much smaller, if you break these into smaller particles, overall surface that is available is
00:18:41
Speaker
exponentially higher. And this surface basically is what enables nanomaterials to have very varied and very important properties that can be leveraged for various kinds of applications. So that is what is happening when you are breaking things down into macro to micro to nano. And how do you define macro micro nano?
00:19:02
Speaker
Is there a numerical? So basically let's say anything which is one meter or let's say one centimeter in that range all this everything is macro. We have milli which is millimeter and then you have micrometer 10 to the minus 3 meter is micrometer and then you have nano which is you know minus 6 is micro and 10 to the minus 9 is nano so it is very small. Then on nanometer your hair is in micrometers
00:19:28
Speaker
So I did thousands of times thinner than a hair. That's what we're talking about right here. Surface area allows for like you give that example of the matchmaker, the catalyst. So more surface area means more space for things to come together and react and things. There are the properties which as you reduce the size, there are the properties that also come into the picture, but this is the most easiest one to understand.
00:19:51
Speaker
what are the properties coming to the picture like for example the conductivity changes so just another example which is often used in our technology is that if you take gold if you take gold is a very good conductor of electricity but if you keep on breaking it down into smaller and smaller particles gold will become a semiconductor or and if you further break it down it can even go into becoming an insulator which is when the
00:20:16
Speaker
contradictory in the tactical sense of how we visualize gold or silver in that sense. Interesting. Okay. Fascinating. Change a lot as you reduce size. Okay. Fascinating. Okay. Now tell me about the battery technology. Like you said, not much innovation has been happening in battery technology. What is the state of... So basically what's happening in a lithium-ion battery list, lithium-ion battery itself.
00:20:41
Speaker
So if you open a lithium ion battery, you will see a coil like an aluminum foil coil into a casing and that close. So if you open that up, you will realize that there are two coils, two parallel coils which are coiled together to make a battery pack.
00:20:55
Speaker
And what's happening between these foils is that it can be imagined to be a long corridor. And then on one wall of the corridor, there are multiple shooters, like with guns, who are standing. And then when you're charging the battery, these shooters are firing bullets at the wall in front of you. Now these bullets are those lithium ions. So as they move from one electrode, as we call it, or one wall to the other wall, charging happens.
00:21:20
Speaker
In the basic sense of it, obviously, if you will fire bullets on the wall in front of you, the wall will get broken. Hence, every time charging and discharging is happening, the walls are getting broken and have degradation and then batteries have a limited lifetime. Unlike the usual analogy of just walls bouncing back and forth between the walls, it is not balls. It's basically similar to bullets being fired between the two walls. But how is energy generated in a battery?
00:21:49
Speaker
So energy, as it is going from one wall to another, so to give an analogy, it is in a higher energy state. As it is going from one wall to another, it is going to a higher energy state, right? When it is, so it is similar to bringing water from first floor to the 10th floor. That's how you basically, that's why you need power, water to own water.
00:22:09
Speaker
and then it comes down, it releases energy and it is available in the house. Similarly, as you're charging the battery, you're basically putting energy inside the battery and the ions are going from one place to another, or one port to another, all the energy that are higher in the state, and when it comes to releasing energy for the latest application.
Development of Aluminum Air Battery Technology
00:22:26
Speaker
Now, as this is happening, the wall is always getting broken and this breaking of wall will obviously create noise in the analogy and in the actual battery it will create heat. So that is why batteries get heated up and that's why you see fire, explosion, all of those things.
00:22:42
Speaker
And what happens with the rise in temperature is that this process of the walls breaking up gets amplified. The materials are more agitated, and hence they break faster. So what we have done is that we have nano-engineered this wall in front of you so that A, as the bullets are coming, it does not break. It can cache those bullets into its structure and then throw them back. So the wall is not breaking that basically there is less heat generation.
00:23:08
Speaker
these batteries are far more safer and because it is not getting broken it will last much longer and at the same time because anyway that is not getting broken so why shoot with a pistol start shooting machine gun which is basically equivalent to you can charge it much faster what are the the two materials which these two walls are made of so it can be a variety
00:23:29
Speaker
of materials but so for example the most commonly used chemistry globally is NMC chemistry of lithium ion batteries which we which is basically that this one wall is made up of lithium nickel manganese and cobalt and the other wall is made up of graphite in our case it the first wall can be lithium nickel manganese cobalt it can be any other formulation of lithium with with manganese or nickel and stuff like that and the other wall instead of being of graphite
00:23:57
Speaker
we have it made up of titanium, a nano-engineered titanium with Glauconium Corporation, so that enables it to catch these bullets and explain. You can charge faster and last longer in all of those things. And then there is another chemistry, which is lithium ferrous phosphate, which we are also developing. So in this case, instead of lithium nickel, magnesium cobalt, we have lithium, iron, and phosphate. Now, because there is no nickel and cobalt, it is far more cost effective.
00:24:23
Speaker
From an India perspective, it is far more self-reliant because iron and phosphate is available. Lithium still becomes sourced from Australia and other places. And also what happens is that as compared to NMC, lithium LFP and lithium titanate, the LFP and LTO chemistries that we are making are more resilient to higher temperature.
00:24:44
Speaker
NMC is very, very sensitive. It can explode, it can catch fire, it can degrade much faster, whereas LSP and LTO are far more resilient. So if they have a longer life, they can form in very high temperatures. And the way charging happens is that one of these corridors, when it's plugged in, then one of these corridors gets a positive charge, and therefore it attracts one of the walls of the corridor gets charged, and then the ions move to that side, which is high analogy of shooting bullets.
00:25:12
Speaker
And then when you reverse the direction, then bullets come back from the other side.
00:25:18
Speaker
And it releases energy in that, because it's going from high state to low state. Okay. Got it. So about 2018, I guess you must have started battery research. Tell me about that journey of Chile from an idea to a minimum viable product. I think the first battery technology that we decided to work upon was aluminium air battery, or as we call it, the aluminium fuel cell. And we were trying to solve everything at one goal. So we were saying,
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, and what is an aluminium fusiv? So that's like lithium ion batteries are there, so aluminium air battery, the technology which is there, in which you don't need to charge it. So basically what happens is that the battery is being utilized, aluminium plate, which is one of the walls in this analogy of a corridor, is getting consumed. So all the aluminium will just go to the other wall and it will get finished, then nothing can happen again.
Fuel Cells and Lithium-Ion Battery Innovations
00:26:04
Speaker
Okay, so this is a one-time use battery basically. The aluminum air battery, the one-time use battery, when you convert this concept into aluminum fuel cell, what you can do is you can refuel, keep on adding more aluminum on this side so that it's on discharging on the other side. So that's the aluminum fuel cell concept.
00:26:21
Speaker
And we developed, we started developing it because we wanted to solve everything at one go. So we said that aluminium is abundantly available in India, so we'll never have supply chain issues. India is the largest producer of aluminium in the world, so no problem on the other side. Battery likes working at 50 degrees Celsius temperature. Temperature is not a problem.
00:26:40
Speaker
Now the cost is very, very cheap itself. So cost is not an issue. So that way it had very like huge positives. And the other thing is that with this battery, you can go for thousands of kilometers because there is a concept that you don't have charging time issue, charging station issue and all of those things.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's no range anxiety. There's no range anxiety. So all of these things were getting solved at one go. But obviously this was a far more nascent concept globally, not just in India globally. Today also, there are only two companies, including Log9 and Israeli company called Finerjee, which are developing and have reached some kind of commercial viability or what to say, technical viability on this technology.
00:27:21
Speaker
And that's where we started our journey into the battery space. But what happens is that in any kind of a fuel cell system, whether it's our aluminum fuel cell or whether you would have heard of hydrogen fuel cell, any kind of fuel cell system always will give you a constant energy. It cannot
00:27:36
Speaker
increase and decrease on demand. So it will always give you constant energy. But if you're driving a vehicle, you would imagine that you are accelerating, de-accelerating, braking, you're stopping. So your energy requirement cannot be constant. It will always keep on fluctuating. Now to manage that fluctuation, you need something which can store energy and give it back.
00:27:55
Speaker
which is your normal battery. So what happened was that as you are developing the... Sir, in a normal battery there is the ability to increase the output. You are just storing charge. You are not generating energy. There you are basically storing energy. So you can take out as much as you want. And as you are developing the aluminum fuel cell, there has to be a sub-component of... One quick question, sorry, before... What is a hydrogen fuel cell? So hydrogen fuel cell is that... So what happens in an aluminum, air battery or aluminum fuel cell is aluminum
00:28:22
Speaker
metal is being oxidized. So what basically that means is that it is aluminium. So what happens is when you mine aluminium from it comes in its oxidized state which we call as oxide. So we have oxide mines across the country and so it is aluminium with oxidized in that form. That is the most stable state of any metal, oxidized state, most stable state of any metal. And that's the reason we have rust on iron and it tries to get rusted because that's natural state.
00:28:47
Speaker
import energy into that to bring it into metallic form basically remove that oxygen so we take these aluminum plates that the system we are intentionally or deliberately trying to oxidize it and as it is getting oxidized and it is getting into a stable state it is releasing energy and that energy is being used to power the system that is the aluminum plate
00:29:06
Speaker
Now, clearly in the case of hydrogen fuel cell, you basically have water to start with. Water is hydrogen and oxygen combined together. When you remove oxygen from water, you basically get hydrogen, which is the excited state of water, so to speak, right? Or hydrogen is what you're getting. Now, in the hydrogen fuel cell, you're deliberately combining hydrogen and oxygen again to release energy and get that nature.
00:29:30
Speaker
But the problem with hydrogen fuel cell is that hydrogen is a very inflammable gas. So it can explode, it has to be stored under pressure, and obviously the system that is required to combine hydrogen oxide in a safe manner becomes costly. So from that perspective, aluminum seems to be a more reasonable or a simpler approach in the larger scheme of things.
00:29:51
Speaker
Hydrogen is not something that you mine, you would create it through chemical process. Yes, it has to be created. Either you can, like the most sort of say ideal ways to split water and create hydrogen, but you can also, which is a greener way, but you can also create it from methane, from natural gas. So you can also create hydrogen from methane, natural gas and all those things.
00:30:11
Speaker
Coming back to your journey, basically when you are developing a fuel cell, you need a battery. As you are developing an aluminum filter technology, we decided to develop this battery sub-component which is suited for the fuel cell application. You need a battery because the fuel cell is constantly in a state of releasing energy.
00:30:29
Speaker
And it is a constant relief. It will be always the same amount of energy when you're using a fluid cell. But in a vehicle, in any application whatsoever, you always have peaks and troughs of energy requirements.
Pivot to UV Disinfection Products During COVID
00:30:40
Speaker
So whenever it doesn't make sense to waste the peaks, to analyze that through a battery will be more efficient.
00:30:46
Speaker
developing this battery which can do this charge and discharges very quickly, has a very long life and all of those things. That's when we started developing our battery pack with using a lithium ion technology. COVID happened. By that time, before COVID, we already had Sequoia, Xfinity, everybody. So we had VCs come in. There were more investors who came in after POMGEMS waiting for 2017, and then we had around in 2018, then VCs coming in 2019. And
00:31:13
Speaker
How much did you raise pre-COVID? So pre-COVID, all put together, we had raised around $5 million. So it was a decent set of money at that time. And the pitch was batteries. Why then you had pivoted two batteries. We have completely focused that the battery is a 4K and that's what we have to do. But COVID happens. Everything was shut down and unlike a software company, you cannot do things on a protocol. You have to be in the lab, develop physics.
00:31:36
Speaker
happened. So the obvious this thing was that why don't we scale down? Why don't we fire a few people, reduce salaries, and just get by for a few orders before things happen to normal. But I put my foot down and said that, no, we're not doing this. These are engineers which are capable of many more things. And the nation or the entire globe is at its best. So why not develop something which is beneficial for the requirement at this time?
00:31:59
Speaker
At the same time, it can keep us afloat. That's how, for six or seven months, we did this whole line of products around UV disinfection. We pioneered that entire concept in the country. We had 70% market share within a quarter of launch. It was phenomenal. It was done at breakneck speed. From idea to understanding the UV technology to creating a product
00:32:20
Speaker
was setting up manufacturing and dispatching. It took us 14 days, one fall. Wow, amazing. Tell me what is the idea? How does it work? How does UV disinfection work?
00:32:31
Speaker
infection is something which is known, but you have to keep it at the right shape and form. And then you have to also have to simulate what amount of UV dosage will be required to kill coronavirus. You can kill a lot of microbes, but how much would be required to kill COVID? So we did a lot of back study, a lot of analysis was available from the SARS. SARS and COVID are very similar in nature. They are very similar in all of the times.
00:32:56
Speaker
All of that simulation, all of that analysis happened, then we were able to narrow down how much amount of UV is required, then setting up a supply chain in middle of COVID. What form factor, like for what use case did you want to? So basically for anything from a mask to hospital equipment, to groceries coming into your house, anything and everything, any object that you can touch, basically you should be able to sanitize it.
00:33:19
Speaker
Like something the size of a microwave oven. Yes. So it was actually called Karana oven. So we called it Karana oven. And you could stuff things inside and sanitize them. And the idea that everything you cannot put a sanitizer on it. And when you put the sanitizer on, so something has to be more say, non-touch or non-contact in that sense. And that's how it started. And then we did.
00:33:42
Speaker
I think some 20 odd SKUs of it, from our own type of thing to conveyor systems and towers and hand-drilling systems and whatnot, and even deployed them at the airports. Even today, at the Bangalore airport, all the baggage goes through our conveyor system, which was designed by us and deployed over there with disinfection.
00:33:59
Speaker
This would be like the first revenue making that happen. Yeah, absolutely. It was the first. And in that sense, I think it was really good for the team because we got a sense of what does it take to develop product, take it to market, manufacturing, branding. How did you figure out manufacturing, and especially during COVID? We worked with various, so to say, contract manufacturers in Bangalore.
00:34:22
Speaker
in around Bangalore. And the co-founder Karthik, he had a short stint at ITC. So he had some background of setting up manufacturing facilities in ITC. And we scrambled all of that together, set up these contact manufacturers, rolled their entire process and then set up distribution. We had 140 some odd retail points across the country within a matter of one month. And this even in Meghalaya, Manipur and in the north or northeast, Jammu and Kashmir, we had our
00:34:49
Speaker
systems go all the way to the army cantonment where an incident happened. I think even today, if you go to the Prime Minister's office, you are supposed to keep everything that you carry, your file, mobile, whatever, into a Corona oven before you can meet the Prime Minister.
00:35:09
Speaker
So we applied for and by the cross anywhere and everywhere. And the end result, we didn't need to fire anyone. We didn't need to reduce. We actually gave increments to recover. And the people who were working were super excited. And also it gave a huge commercial sense to the entirety. And as we went through this process, we realized that how important it is to go commercial. Our point is to have a product in the market at the start. And that gave us an idea that this battery that we were developing as part of the aluminum fuel cell larger stack,
Post-COVID Focus on Battery Pack Commercialization
00:35:39
Speaker
This component itself has a huge application in the Indian context, and it can go into the small vehicles, like two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and solve the challenges that we have over there. And that's how we were able to reduce our go-to market from a battery perspective by at least three years, if not more. And then we went commercial on that side, and now we have a huge standing in the battery industry or the EV industry in India.
00:36:03
Speaker
Okay, I want to understand how that happened. The battery component you were working on, you made it that titanium graphene that you said it was a titanium graphene. In the batteries, there are two elements of manufacturing. One is your cell manufacturing and the other is battery pack. So you first make a cell, then you put multiple cells together. What is the difference? Okay, cell is like a small unit of battery basically.
00:36:25
Speaker
The cell is fairly similar to your remote cell. Now for a vehicle to work you will have to have multiple cells put together connected with all the electronics, battery management system and everything into a battery pack so that it can power a vehicle or any application whatsoever.
00:36:40
Speaker
Now, cell manufacturing is the most complicated and the most Capex intensive play in the entire value chain. Because we, as usual, are always late to any new party, any new innovation, we're always late to the party. People in China or in Europe have been setting up these things. The last 20 years, we have just woken up to the extent that in India, we're talking about setting up cell manufacturing to the scale of
00:37:07
Speaker
as a country as a whole by 2030 whereas individual factories in China and Europe are coming up with capacity of 100 GWh today. So, there are 100 GWh size of factories coming up today where our country's expectation aspiration by 2030 as a whole is 50-70 GWh.
00:37:27
Speaker
That is the kind of disparity that is there and hence cannot start small. You cannot say that I will take baby steps and start small and move forward to it. In that sense, you need to have a large factory and anything less than 10, 15 gigawatt hours is just too small to be of any cognitive benefit. And setting up a 10, 15 gigawatt hour kind of facility is a Capex of 3000 plus cores. And.
00:37:54
Speaker
You can imagine how many business houses would have that capability to set up something that they can't cross at onset itself. That is where cell technology is challenging. That is part of the CAPEX. Then access of technology. Where will it come from? If you look at the PLI scheme of the government itself, the government was expecting that a lot of international battery majors
00:38:16
Speaker
What is the PLI scheme? So PLI scheme is a production linked incentive scheme where the government is trying to incentivize manufacturing, cell manufacturing in India. So there are schemes for different sectors. There are PLI schemes for semiconductor. There are PLI schemes for automotive. There are PLI schemes for batteries in a similar fashion.
00:38:33
Speaker
Like they would get some tax breaks they manufacture in India. Tax breaks, but if they were to hit the benchmarks of quality manufacturing, then you get some rebate from the government per unit of production or per kilowatt hour or whatever. Now the thing is that as the PLI scheme came about, the government was expecting that obviously a lot of international battery majors would apply for the PLI scheme and they would be willing to set up base in India for this to happen. Not even a single one came forward.
00:39:00
Speaker
because they were too caught up with the demand coming in from Europe, China, US in that sense, that no incentive for them to focus on India.
00:39:08
Speaker
And if they're not even willing to look at setting up manufacturing pocket award, giving access to technology in that sense. And that's the other bottleneck, where the technology come from. So what we are doing at Log9 is that A, we are the only company today in India, which has a homegrown, ground up, developed cell technology available on the lithium-ion side, which has been proven to work in a viable manner. And now we are scaling up those processes.
00:39:33
Speaker
The cell technology here that you're talking about, that is the titanium graphene, titanium one and the lithium ferrous first for LFP. LFP and United Indian, these two technologies which are the choice based on the cooperating conditions. Both the technologies we are developing and scaling up, but it takes a while to scale up the process, arrange aspects for all that machinery, all that commercial, this thing to happen.
00:39:57
Speaker
And that's the reason we brought in our Raja batteries as one of our lead investors last year. So working with them very closely to see how we can scale it quickly. Now, as this is scaled up, you cannot just keep on sitting on your hands. You need to provide validation of these technologies working in the market.
00:40:14
Speaker
So we decided that in the time our own cells are able to reach the market, we will import cells of this type, the closest that we can get and start producing batteries and start creating a market for ourselves.
Scaling Up Homegrown Cell Technology
00:40:28
Speaker
And that's what we have been able to do and commercialize so far. We're in the battery packs and we were the first to bring this kind of cells to India.
00:40:35
Speaker
Did you bring LFP or titanium grass in? Titan 8. Titan 8 is what is called LTO. So we were the first ones to put LTO cells together into a battery pack for mobility, two-wheeler, three-wheeler, four-wheeler cargo trucks and those kinds of applications.
00:40:51
Speaker
and launch it in the market and that has solved a lot of problems which was a problem of life because when these batteries, while they were able to run for 4-5 years in a Chinese setting or a European setting, in India they were not even lasting for 2-2.5 years.
00:41:07
Speaker
And that was affecting the livelihood of somebody who was trying to buy an electric three-wheeler, for example, and do realistic operations of that. Secondly, I took just forever to charge these vehicles for five hours. It's just too long to charge them. And third thing is that as the battery was discharging, they were losing the load bearing capacity or the torque or the acceleration on the vehicle.
00:41:27
Speaker
There were multiple challenges in operations of these vehicles, but with the only batteries you could charge them in 15 to 30 minutes time. You have a life, you didn't have to worry about what life, the life of the battery was 3-4 times the life of the vehicle itself. There was no challenge of replacement of the battery or your range going down every month, so that was not there. Thirdly, wearing capacity, whether your battery is 100% charged or 1% charged, it was all the same.
00:41:51
Speaker
That kind of gave us a lot of traction very quickly. To the extent that we went selling these batteries commercially just last December, within a matter of three, four months, our vehicle manufacturing partner, Omega Seiki Mobility, which is a three-wheeler manufacturer out of Delhi, they went from number fifth position in the electric three-wheeler cargo category to number one position within a matter of four months.
00:42:12
Speaker
So that is the kind of scale and traction that we have seen. And while we are scaling our battery production, we are also scaling cell manufacturing. And we did our day zero. So this was basically technology day, which we now plan to do every 21st of April of every year, which is our foundation day as well. So we did the first installation of it this year, probably 22 April 1st, 21 April 22, we did that. And we announced that what kind of technology we are bringing up, what is possible with this technology.
00:42:40
Speaker
and also announced the setting up of the first commercial scale cell manufacturing line in India and Southeast Asia. So this will be the largest cell manufacturing line that will be coming up by logline in the entire Southeast Asian region. Is your technology very different from what you're importing? You're already importing that LTE battery.
00:43:00
Speaker
Yes, it is very different from what we are reporting right now. So we'll be able to offer much better features in terms of life, in terms of the range that we can offer and also the cost of every cell that we'll be able to produce. And this is basically the way those two walls inside the cell are designed and what kind of materials we're putting it up.
00:43:19
Speaker
Okay. So you've changed the way in which those walls are designed. These walls, how are they manufactured? Like how does a nanomaterial get manufactured at scale? So basically in a physical form, it will look like a powder. Because what happens is when you are, when you have these nanomaterials in a powdered form, they don't stay as individual particles. So they will regular marinate is what we call it. And they'll form bunches. And then if you look at it, it looks like an autumn.
00:43:44
Speaker
or whatever color it might be in, but then you have to disperse it, you create formulations, you could put suspension of it, create a battery, then you coat that onto the foil which is very similar in physical shape and form like a kitchen foil and then coat that, combine materials together, put it inside a kit.
00:44:02
Speaker
fill the electrolyte and then seal it out. So that's the process of it. And it has to happen in a very controlled environment. It can, there can be no dust, there can be no moisture. So that control environment has to be made. Okay. And how does this ATA get made the powdered form of the nano material? There are two approaches to it, right? There are two approaches. Then you start with bulk, then you just seal it down. So basically, are breaking a bigger material into very small pieces. So that we call as a top-down approach.
00:44:30
Speaker
The other approach is that you, and did the tizzling happen with like blades or big wave processes? So you can have vibrations, you can have blades, you can have hammers. So there are various processes and equipments to do it, depending on what you are dealing with. And then the other approach is that you assemble atom by atom. You have things in a gaseous form. You take atoms, combine them together to get them on nanomaterial directly, which we call the bottom approach that you're starting with atoms and molecules and creating
00:44:59
Speaker
So either the two approaches are there. Typically, when you're dealing with bulk applications, for example, coatings and batteries and stuff like that, you typically take the top-down approach because that is more economical. It has less finesse, it has less purity, the top-down less purity, but it is more economical and viable in that sense.
00:45:20
Speaker
Whereas if you are dealing in the semiconductor industry or electronics industry in that sense, then you need very high purity and there the amount of material required is also necessary. So you don't worry about doing a bottom approach and assembling atoms, atom by atom and then getting the material. So typically that's how you segregate the two processes or two parts of creating gravity.
00:45:40
Speaker
You
Battery as a Service Model
00:45:41
Speaker
said setting up a plan costs a lot of money, like 3000 crore. So, do you have that money in the bank or what is the way in which you're doing? We have money in the bank right now, but given that we are not just dealing with a meter technology, we are not dealing with something which already is happening as well, we are developing it in a new way.
00:45:59
Speaker
So we have that level to have baby steps in the process. So we get a small plant first, which itself is not a small investment, the plant that we are setting up right now, it is still 200 crores of investment, and then other expanded to that 2,300 crores scale. So we have, we'll do it in those steps. But if you are just taking a technology which is available on every looking corner, then you cannot start with a small, never be competitive. That is in technological edges.
00:46:29
Speaker
in the industry. Fascinating. You said you raised from Amara Raja and others. How much have you raised? Have you raised this 200 colors that you need? Yeah, so that has been raised and we are raising more right now. So last year, till three months back, we have raised around 25 million dollars. We have just closed another 25 million right now. And the total round that we are raising at this point is around 50 million dollars. So there are more investor commission that are happening for the balance 25.
00:46:55
Speaker
And essentially, your product line today is purely just a battery pack. The UV line, you're still doing that, or that was? The whole company is just focused on batteries. Currently, you are importing the cells and then assembling it into a battery pack here. You have built the software in-house for all the prints of the electronics, all the battery design. Since then, VMS, everything is developed in-house.
00:47:20
Speaker
And how many battery packs have you sold till date? So we have around 2,000 vehicles with our batteries on road. And by the end of this financial year, we are looking at a number of 15,000. And are these like IoT enabled? Do you get back data of all the data? So we have data and we have predictive models also. In our system, we can monitor each and every cell. So there is quite a bit of control on what's happening inside the battery pack.
00:47:44
Speaker
And at the same time, we have predictive models where we can see how the energy is being used inside the battery. We even say that your tire pressure is low and hence you're losing efficiency. So that level of predictive analysis is what we need. So which is why you needed to work with a manufacturer and have a deep integration. You couldn't just find a distributor who will sell it because you have the data coming back to you. That data adds value to the manufacturer also. Interesting.
00:48:09
Speaker
Does the vehicle owner get data from you about battery health and all of this? Vehicle owner gets the data. The manufacturer gets the data. We get the data. So it's boiling. Then even financiers get the data. How is the battery health? Is it fine? What is the life left? What kind of financing they can look at it? So the entire value chain gets stretched together. Because I think the biggest cost component in an EV is the battery. Like 40-50% of the cost is
00:48:35
Speaker
And so, you tell me about this partnership with Omega Secchi. Why did you select them as your partners and what is the future of this partnership? While we are now working with 15 different vehicle manufacturers in the country, including new age companies like Omega Secchi, many of them have already been announced, Gregor, Northway, Ebiko, a lot of other players.
00:48:56
Speaker
then Hero Electric, that's in our JMT. So all of these are already in our partnership. There are others as well, total 15, 16 OEMs that we are working with. And it's also legacy companies, large companies as well. The reason we went forward with Omega Secchi to start with is because A, they were new. They had the fire to do things at our pace and at our speed, and also to disrupt the market. Traditional companies, just by the nature of their scale and operations, they tend to become inherently slow.
00:49:25
Speaker
I was saying it is either wrong or it is just the nature of the business. So you have to work on those same guys. While they are also important partners, it is for a startup, it is important to deliver. And so are you also working on charging infrastructure or battery is your sole focus?
00:49:41
Speaker
We don't make our own charging stations. We also don't employ our own charging stations, but we still manage to control the largest fast charging infrastructure in the country. And that is because our end customers of these batteries and these vehicles are all commercial users. And these commercial users, unlike personal users, like you and me using it for home purposes, unlike us, they provide consistent charging demand. Because a home user like you and me would, may or may not end up at a charging station in a big step.
00:50:11
Speaker
Typically, you would like to charge at home where electricity costs is 6, 7 rupees a unit. Why go to a charging station where it doesn't charge a double or more than that? And at the same time, we don't need to charge every day. Our utilization is very low. 30, 40 kilometers average is what comes out in India. Whereas in a commercial use case, you are at least looking at 120, 130 kilometers per day. So you need to have multiple charges during the day itself. And it's predictable in the sense that if, let's say, 10 vehicles of our type are deployed in a certain locality, those 10 vehicles will remain
00:50:40
Speaker
in that locality their entire life. Unlike us, when we are going to office one day to the cinema on another day and then on a road trip the next week, most commercial workers will follow the same route, same track day in and day out. So that provides a consistent, predictable demand for charging and enables charging Infra to grow more viable for the business.
00:51:02
Speaker
And in the case, we were able to provide minimum guarantees and utilization commitments to these charge point operators, and they were able to scale as well. Before we went commercial, there were only 300 odd charges, some 300 change charges deployed all over the country, which can support rapid charging and fast charging.
00:51:20
Speaker
And within six months of, and this happened over the last three, four years, and with our commercialization happening within the month of six months, we were able to put 200 additional of them, or we were able to facilitate installation of 200 additional
Standardization and Compatibility in Charging Infrastructure
00:51:32
Speaker
of them. And we are looking at a scenario by the end of this financial year, we will be putting 200 every month, or we will be facilitating 200 every month. That is the scale that is required and it can only come with commercialization.
00:51:45
Speaker
So this is more like a platform approach that you're taking. You are saying that on my platform, I have EV manufacturers who are putting my batteries in. And on my platform, I also have charging companies who are setting up charge points and I can avoid the business guarantees to both of them.
00:52:02
Speaker
For an EV manufacturer, it makes sense because then the customers don't have range anxiety. And for the charging infra provider, it is assured revenue, basically predictable revenue because you know what is being deployed. Probably you can also tell them that there is this deployment happening here that therefore I would need. For Apple, this customer of ours, they contain vehicles for their fleet operations. So why don't we put a charger at their pace?
00:52:26
Speaker
And that has happened. But these manufacturers share data with you of who's buying, where the vehicles are being deployed, like that sales data. We have the data online, though. We know which percent buying, where they're using it. So all that data is coming from the battery pack. OK, so you have API integration with them. So whenever a new sign up happens on the app for the vehicle, you get to know about it.
00:52:48
Speaker
because you are providing the battery. The battery dashboard is powered by you in a way. So what other pieces are you tackling in the EV space? So you told me you're fixing battery, you're fixing charging. What about the port? I'm coming from a mobile phone user. So in mobile phone, you have Apple has its proprietary port and Android phones have the USB-C port and so on.
00:53:11
Speaker
Are there such issues in EVs also? A lot of it. So while there was a lot of excitement to create our own charging connector, we shied away from it. We said that let's use what is already at scale. Even if that scale is small, at least we'll get some head start and we'll not be unnecessarily introducing another competition into the connector space. So we use whatever was already deployed and scaled on that itself.
00:53:37
Speaker
which is like the most deployed so the thing is that two two most deployed ones one is called GB by T connectors or in India we call is international for GB by D and in India it's called R a TC 001 and then the other is CCS so GB by T connector is for sub hundred volt platforms
00:53:56
Speaker
smaller vehicle, smaller cars, two-wheelers, four-wheelers it can, three-wheelers it can support that. And CCS is then about 250 volts, which is meant for heavier trucks, bigger cars, and where you need higher voltage platforms to be definitely there. So these two are fine, and I think these are the two connectors which should be progressed further. Keep these two connectors, make it universal in that sense. Globally, there is a gravitation towards these two charging protocols, so I think we should buy onto that.
00:54:24
Speaker
There is, I don't know why there is this inherent need to develop your own connector all the time. It makes it very complicated for everybody. How many volts is there in a two-wheeler? Like you said, sub 100 volt is 2 and 3. 48 to 72 volts. And it's not like linear. So you have the, like the most common is 48. They have very few 60 and then 72 is also there. So 72 and 48 are the most common. There are a few platforms which are on 60 volt as well.
00:54:49
Speaker
And for three wheeler, three wheeler is, I think most of the industry is at 48. Oh, okay. Same only for both. Okay. Okay. But three wheeler is like predictable usage because purely commercial, you don't need very long range because you'll always be near charging. Okay.
00:55:05
Speaker
What about for a car? So there are vehicle platforms which are at 48 also, but now that is completely fading away. But we have, for example, Tagore and Burrito, the older four-wheel electric cars in India, they were, I think, like 72 volts platforms. But now four-wheeler, like all car kind of platforms are moving to 300, 400 volt platforms because that enables after charging and you need to have bigger battery pack as well.
00:55:30
Speaker
We will still have four-wheeler cargo vehicles. For example, Tata launched one, we also launched one. And those are around 90, 96 volts kind of platform. What do you mean you lost a vehicle? So with another partner, there's a company called Northway. So with them, we launched a four-wheeler cargo platform with a backpack.
00:55:48
Speaker
What else now besides these? So what we've discussed, you've discussed charging infra, you've discussed battery. What other issues are you tackling? We are also financing another issue. So we are also offering battery or service options. So while our battery doesn't need to be sold because it can be charged very quickly, but what we are doing is delinking the battery financially from the vehicle. So you can pay for the vehicle upfront and for the battery part of it, you can pay a lease or a rental in that sense.
00:56:15
Speaker
Fascinating. That is amazing. So essentially then I am no longer worried about battery life.
Focus on Commercial EVs and Sustainability Challenges
00:56:21
Speaker
I just am paying a monthly subscription fees. Basically it's like a subscription. I'm subscribing to a battery then. Amazing. Okay. And how does the cost differ for somebody who's subscribing versus somebody buying out?
00:56:32
Speaker
Your overall impact on per kilometer doesn't change much. Obviously, in an subscription, you will have to pay the interest rate as well. But in any case, you will be paying the interest because hardly anybody buys the vehicle upfront, paying all the money. I'd rather take an EMI loan or you will pay as an subscription. So it doesn't make much of a difference. But yes, it provides more peace of mind because liability of the battery is not with you, it's with the manufacturer like us. And we are happy to take that.
00:56:57
Speaker
And that is on your balance sheet or do you like get it financed? There are multiple structures. So some of them are on our balance sheet. There are other structures where in dissolve balance sheet and stuff like that. So it's a little nascent on the side. We're trying to get it more mature and open to exploring options at this point in time.
00:57:16
Speaker
And this would be done in partnership with the manufacturer like the manufacturer would not all of them would be giving this option the ones who've sat opted in for this program they would start offering and this payment comes to you or it goes via the manufacturer how does that work like that.
00:57:31
Speaker
It is a happening matter. It comes back to you. Fascinating. Okay. And so this actually would give you a very predictable monthly revenues then if you did it only like only subscription waste. Would you want to do that or you're neutral to both? We are neutral to both at this point of time. Whatever works for the end customer. If you practically look at it, our business is making bad news. Everything else is to support that business. So we don't need to be picky on that side.
00:57:58
Speaker
Will this lead to some selection bias? People who select subscription are likely to misuse batteries because then they know that a misuse can happen in case when you have battery swapping because you are touching the battery you are removing putting it back every day whereas here the battery is fixed below the base of the car or the vehicle whatever it is so what can you really do with it you cannot you're not even handling it every day
00:58:24
Speaker
So that perspective, we are better off. And as I said, we are able to monitor each and every cell inside the battery pack. So when anybody tries to do any hanky-panky with the battery, immediately an alarm can get triggered. So in this, like you will, once the life of the battery is over, you will replace with a new one and the person will just keep paying subscription.
00:58:44
Speaker
We do. Actually, it's the other way around because, for example, in the three-wheeler, typically the life of the three-wheeler is five to six years. Battery life is more than 20 years. So the battery will come back to us after five, six years. And we are even offering guaranteed buybacks on the battery pack. And then we can refurbish it, augment it a little bit and put it in our next set of vehicles. This sounds like a massive play, battery as a service. I think this could probably be the biggest part of what you're building.
00:59:10
Speaker
Currently you're only doing commercial vehicles like you don't want to get into passenger vehicles and all.
India's Renewable Energy Goals and Challenges
00:59:15
Speaker
So it doesn't make sense of the climate. Contrary to believe all EVs are not green. Okay, what do you mean by that? So the thing is that EV manufacturing and battery manufacturing in particular is a very carbon intensive process. So there are a lot of emissions associated with the battery manufacturing itself. Now if combined the emissions that have happened in the manufacturing process and the emissions which you are saving or not saving on the road,
00:59:38
Speaker
And a typical car, let's say, a TATA Nexon, for example, right? A TATA Nexon was EV versus a TATA Nexon petrol. It will take you 100,000 kilometers before an EV becomes greener than a petrol bike. That is primarily because A, batteries are ready to manufacture. And B, even today, 70% of the energy anyway in the country is coming from burning coal. So you're not absolutely green when you're using electricity to charge a vehicle.
01:00:03
Speaker
together, there is a threshold of 100,000 kilometers before you hit parity. And no personal use case vehicle is driven for 100,000 kilometers in its lifetime. And you're very rarely, whereas a commercial vehicle will be driven like a taxi, for example, will be driven for 300,000 odd kilometers per hour, 300,000 kilometers in its lifetime. There's a path to sustainability in that sense.
01:00:26
Speaker
So, for the next two to three years, we will be focusing only on commerce. And we expect that the Prime Minister's dream of adding 500 gigawatt of renewable energy on the grid comes through much sooner than expected. And then even the personal use case vehicles will become greener and the threshold of $100,000 will potentially become $40,000 in kilometers. So, then you have a part of sustainability on the personality side as well.
01:00:50
Speaker
Once this 500 gigawatt of renewable energy is activated, what percentage of our city will then be green? Depends till when it comes up. It also the growing demand. If it comes up by 27, 28, I think 70, 80% of our electricity should be clean. But if it takes longer, then you never know what is the overall demand. Like there are projections out there for that as well, the factor of time.
01:01:15
Speaker
And is the government doing something to get this 500 gigawatt? Like it sounds like a massive target, like a policy. Yeah, it is a massive target because the overall demand today is 250 gigawatt. 250 gigawatt is the total demand of the country and what 500 gigawatt are enabled. So the installations are aspirational or the targets are aspirational. And at the same time, there are a lot of policy interventions that are coming up. And so the government is really focused on doing it, but there are some inherent practical challenges also associated with it.
01:01:43
Speaker
What challenges are there? The biggest challenge is that renewable energy is intermittent in nature. Solar will only work when the sun is out there. What do you do at night? Wind always doesn't blow and it doesn't always move at the same speed. You will have variants of generation. Now, how do you tackle with this varied generation but you need consistent demand? Is there a demand which is consistent on the user side? How do you do?
01:02:07
Speaker
there has to be channelization of energy. And then again, batteries come in with a picture. And then what are the scale of batteries? And again, what is the cost of these batteries? So again, the same. So in a way to have 500 gigawatt renewable energy, you probably need something like 100 to 200 gigawatt of battery storage capacity. Much more than that.
01:02:25
Speaker
And this is a space for you to explore as well. We are exploring that, but the space is slightly more nascent, more nascent. Things need to be figured out because there are a lot of other algorithms in the systems which need to come up. It has a grid and all of those things. So even the government policies are shaping up now. Also, for this to really work, you need to bring in dynamic pricing of electricity.
01:02:45
Speaker
Today in India we hardly have any dynamic pricing. The cost of electricity is same in the day and the same in the night. Whereas if you look at Europe, US, everywhere else there is higher pricing in peak hours, the evening hours and stuff like that. Whereas daytime pricing or the late night pricing is far lower. For this to efficiently work and for the batteries to be paid up by themselves, dynamic pricing is very, very important.
01:03:05
Speaker
For those taking up, we had a huge challenge in India, setting up smart meters. It's a known fact that a significant portion of our electricity consumption is all theft. So if people don't want smart meters, then you cannot steal electricity and all of those things. There are some very serious on-ground challenges which the government is trying to tackle.
01:03:25
Speaker
Is a one gigawatt battery fundamentally different from a 48 volt battery pack? Yeah, the voltage bands can be different, but it's all multiple units coming together. It's the same technology only. The same technology, but just that your architecture, the battery pack level will change.
01:03:44
Speaker
Waiting clock will more or less remain the same. And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to this show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in this show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in