Petronas, the Malaysian oil & gasoline main, has backed Log9, an Indian deep-tech startup within the EV battery house, by way of a $40Mn Collection B fundraise. The beginning-up witnessed a mixture of fairness and debt increase led by Amara Raja Batteries Ltd. (a significant conventional auto-battery participant in India) and Petronas Ventures and noticed participation from different marquee buyers equivalent to Incred Monetary Companies Personal Ltd., Unity Small Finance Financial institution, Oxyzo Monetary Companies Personal Ltd. and Western Capital Advisors Personal Ltd.
Log9 is wanting to make use of this recent capital to extend its battery manufacturing to a 2 GWH capability by the top of 2024 and fee India’s first absolutely built-in Lithium Ion Cell manufacturing line. Moreover, over ₹100cr can be invested in direction of developments in cell and battery expertise stacks.
India’s Electrical Automobiles business, although nonetheless nascent and largely nonetheless comprising of two-wheeler and three-wheeler gross sales, is advancing fairly quickly. By way of market dimension, the Indian EV market was approximated at $1.4Bn in 2021, is anticipated to be $2 Bn by 2023 and $7.09 Bn by 2025. And whereas the market doesn’t boast of 4 wheeler gross sales like Teslas and BYDs of the world, it has quickly adopted low-cost, excessive quantity EV options — electrical three wheelers for instance. Consequently, by way of sheer volumes, the market is already at an inflection level, and is anticipated to see an much more accelerated development.
Founder in 2015 by the trio of Dr. Akshay Singhal, Kartik Hajela and Pankaj Sharma, Log9 claims to be India’s solely battery maker, that holds in-house competencies starting from electrode supplies to cell fabrication to battery packs. The corporate claims that its vary of batteries guarantees to cost 9x sooner, final 9x longer and supply 9x larger efficiency and security, due to in-house R&D and battery manufacturing tech.
“As a battery expertise pioneer, we foresee these investments to cement our place as a pacesetter within the industrial EV house and to increase into stationary battery sectors equivalent to energy backup and grid storage. We may also be aggressively pursuing pilots in abroad markets over the following few quarters, with a selected concentrate on the tropical belt”, mentioned Singhal, Founder and CEO at Log9.
For Petronas, the Malaysian oil & gasoline main that has been trying to diversify its power enterprise like all main conventional petrochemical gamers, investments by way of its VC arm are made particularly taking a look at new-energy corporations.
Arni Laily, Head of PETRONAS Ventures mentioned, “Log9’s strategy to the way forward for power continues to excite us and strongly aligns with the funding priorities of PETRONAS Ventures. This partnership will additional improve PETRONAS’ enlargement within the new power and inexperienced mobility sectors.”
Log9 may also use part of this fundraise to put money into strategically related new-age power corporations. The investments can be targeted on corporations associated to charging infrastructure, expertise ancillaries and corporations combating local weather change at giant.