Bengaluru-headquartered sophisticated battery-tech Log 9 Materials has proclaimed an equity partnership and collaboration with Amara Raja Batteries (ARBL), one of India’s largest manufacturers of industrial and automotive batteries. The deal consists an investment of $5 Million from Amara Raja Batteries during its ongoing Series A+ funding round.
For ARBL, the investment pursues the announcement of its ‘Energy & Mobility’ strategy in June this year, which focuses on entering into new green technologies and solutions. These initiatives would include expansion and investments that would assist the firm maintain technological and business leadership in the ‘Energy & Mobility’ space, apart from creating novel growth avenues.
While providing an impetus to the research and development work at ongoing projects of Log 9, ARBL is likely to be the primary partner for scaling up the manufacturing operations of Logg’s battery and fuel cell technologies.
Log 9’s newly-developed Rapid Charging Battery Packs solve numerous challenges to expedite 2/3 wheeler EV adoption in India, whereas Log 9’s flagship Aluminum Fuel Cell technology is aimed towards long-haul electric mobility and as a zero emission alternative to diesel generators.
Vikramadithya Gourineni, Executive Director at ARBL said that their investment is in line with
ARBL’s plans to invest in cutting-edge technologies to escalate its evolution towards becoming an ‘Energy & Mobility!’ enterprise. “This will mark the first in a series of interesting developments that we plan to execute in the future. In this fast-changing technology landscape, we do not believe in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and we are convinced that there will be the scope for interplay of multiple technology solutions for various applications. We believe that Log 9 has made great progress in developing a range of technologies that will prove very promising in emerging mobility applications. I am confident that both entities can derive significant synergies resulting in mutual long term benefits. ” he further said.
Akshay Singhal, Founder & CEO, Log 9 Materials states, “We are delighted to have ARBL as one of the anchor investors in the Series A+ funding round of Log 9. The partnership with ARBL will enable us to propel commercialization at scale of our Rapid Charging Batteries, which in turn shall play a major role in the future in Log 9 eventually becoming the frontrunner and one of the largest Indian players in advanced cell chemistries. In the upcoming months of 2021, we at Log 9 are looking to take our breakthrough rapid charging battery-tech to end-users at scale; on the other hand, the development and advancements of our Aluminum Fuel Cells will also continue to happen in parallel – including pilots and OEM-level vehicular integrations.”
Log 9 has also assured securing funding from existing investors including Exfinity Ventures and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge Programme, alongside a clutch of new investors, as a part of its Series A+ funding round. The strategic angels who also participated in the funding round are — Rajesh Yabaji and Chanakya Hridaya, Co-Founders of logistics industry Unicorn Blackbuck; Rajesh Ramaiah, Partner, Premji Invest; Desikan Sundarajan, MD, Equinor and Faiz Mayalakkara, Director Investments, Emirates Investment Authority. AC Ventures (SEA Frontier Fund LLP) is also among the novel investors of Log 9.
The new investors have, besides the existing investors, invested around $8.5 Million in the ongoing $10-12 Million Series A+ round. The fresh funds raised would be utilized to expand production capacity and business development efforts of Log 9’s latest innovation – Rapid Charging Battery technology – which has already completed successful pilots and is due for commercial roll-out in October 2021. Further, these funds would also be utilized to advance the start-up’s Supercapacitor and Aluminum Fuel Cell based innovations. The start-up plans to establish local cell manufacturing for these technologies under the niche category of the ACC PLI Scheme in the coming years.
