Every October, farmers in northern India burn crop residues to clear fields, and the smoke settles over Delhi for several weeks. These stalks are waste materials with no better use, so burning continues despite fines and anti-burning campaigns.
Furthermore, this is carbon. When properly heated, biomass turns into solid carbon—a material used as an anode in a sodium-ion battery; this is the layer where sodium ions move during cell charging and discharging.
The company was founded in Roorkee in 2019 with the goal of commercializing this connection. Its founders are Akash Soni, CEO, along with Yogesh Kumar Sharma, Asit Sahu, and Nagesh Kumar, all graduates of IIT Roorkee, and the company operates within the TIDES Institute Business Incubator.
The company's approach is to create components in-house rather than assembling imported parts. It produces its own solid carbon under the brand BioBlack, derived from biomass, as well as its own cathode and electrolyte for sodium-ion batteries, combining them into pouch cells.
This vertical integration is the key point. Battery production in India heavily relies on imported cells and materials, and a company that manufactures its own anode, cathode, and electrolyte is less susceptible to supply chain issues.
The market the company targets is not electric vehicles. Sodium-ion cells contain less energy per kilogram than lithium, which is critical for transport but less important for solar installations or streetlights.
Instead, the company has focused on lead-acid batteries, which still dominate Indian applications, from e-rickshaws to inverters and solar streetlights. Lead-acid batteries are cheap, heavy, have a short lifespan, and are toxic if improperly recycled, making them the existing standard against which a cheaper sodium cell has the clearest chance.
According to its own data, the cells achieve energy efficiency of 90 to 95% with a cycle life of over 2000 cycles and can withstand fast charging without thermal runaway. Akash Soni explains the origin of the idea by stating he returned from working on lithium batteries in China at the end of 2018 to create something similar in India.
Recognition came early. Indi Energy received the National Startup Award in 2022 in the energy storage category, presented by the Minister of Commerce, and also won the DRDO Dare to Dream 3.0 competition. Both are government programs, and thanks to them, the company is among the Indian enterprises in the battery sector that the government decided to support at an early stage.
Funding was modest. Company databases record about $1.59 million across three rounds from a large number of investors, including Mumbai Angels, BIG Capital, and Finkurve Financial Services. The last round was registered in July 2021, although records in database histories do not fully align.
The company has a pilot production plant and has announced movement toward mass production. Public records lack data on commercial launch, customers, or revenue, and nothing substantial has been announced since 2024.
This gap is significant in a rapidly evolving industry. When Indi Energy started, sodium-ion cells were laboratory developments; now they are being produced on a large scale elsewhere, narrowing the window of opportunity to be an early player in India.
Indi Energy's position is based on owning the materials, not just the cell itself, which is a long-term advantage whether the cells reach volume or not, and an academic one if they do not.
