Building an EV Battery Empire: Akshay Singhal, Log9 Materials - Backstage with Millionaires

I still remember kind of standing up in one of the meetings and and really putting my feet down and saying that I am not willing to kind of let our 20 people sit on their asses for the entire lockdown you can go and sue me if you want [Music] [Music] welcome to backstage with millionaires the show where we bring you the stories of real Indian startups told by the entrepreneurs that built them [Music] I'm Caleb Friesen and on the show today how akshay's single turned his zero Revenue research lab into one of India's leading indigenous Eevee battery manufacturers building Hardware is hard this sentiment has echoed throughout India's startup ecosystem for years now and it's one of the reasons why some of India's most successful startups build and sell software as a service not Hardware the pre-existing ecosystem required to support Hardware r d and Manufacturing is so nascent and underdeveloped compared to countries like the United States and China that Indian startups often have no choice but to import materials and Technology from other countries and this is what makes log 9 materials so special they're developing indigenous nanotechnology and Battery products in India in spite of how difficult it is to do so and Akshay single logdine's founder didn't actually need to do this he could have started up outside of India if he'd wanted to Akshay was doing an internship in 2014 at the University of Alberta and probably could have stuck around in Canada like so many of India's most academically successful students do but ultimately decided to return to India and begin a graphene startup which he built in his family's Warehouse so definitely a step down in terms of facilities compared to U of A but also a huge step up in terms of Entrepreneurship Akshay refurbished this Warehouse into a makeshift laboratory and got to work developing his first product what was this earth-shattering new technology well it was a cigarette filter made of graphene but then they also developed an Innovative graphene oil spill cleanup pad and both of these products were exciting for Akshay and his small team to work on but it wasn't until log 9 began developing their aluminum fuel cells that this tiny graphene startup began to gain a bit of recognition these aluminum fuel cells or afcs for sure generated a lot of media attention and they also enabled the company to secure millions of dollars from some pretty big investors and on paper this concept of a commercial AFC looked pretty great firstly aluminum as a fuel source is cheap and abundant here in India unlike lithium which had to be imported from other countries aluminum is also very safe to handle as compared to other alternative fuel sources like hydrogen and unlike Lithium-ion batteries or hydrogen fuel cells afcs have incredible range upwards of a thousand kilometers ultimately though in spite of its advantages over existing EV battery and fuel Tech afcs would prove to be a bit of a false start for log 9. fuel systems whether its hydrogen fuel cells or other aluminum fuel cell have one biggest so to say compromise or limitation which is of Energy Efficiency so whether it's in the case of hydrogen where you kind of use renewable energy to create gain hydrogen and then you take the Indian hydrogen to kind of put in the fuel cell to run away curl or produce electricity back from it the overall efficiency of this process is sub 20 percent uh this enter similar case with aluminum as well where you can look at 30 percent maximum 30 35 percent kind of efficiency so it's very low batteries operate at a 90 plus round trip efficiencies so while you have benefits of high operating temperature so you don't have to worry about tropical climate uh you can refuel it refill the system in matter of seconds so you don't worry about charging time uh your range is really huge you can go for thousands of kilometers right but does it really make sense for every every kind of electric application I don't think so because if you have can have something which is 90 plus efficient then why use something which is 30 efficient and most of our Mobility needs are sub uh 100 200 kilometer requirement the average step distance in India is less than 30 kilometers right so from that perspective why use something which is so inefficient and that's where fuel cells are more uh like a relevant for long-haul kind of applications or you know as a stationary system which very required long-term power backup or energy storage for a long term or stuff like that so all of that learning came in as we went more deeper on operationalizing and kind of taking it to market the admin infuser technology right and as we were kind of discovering all of these facts and kind of getting attuned to them the pandemic hit yeah you the pandemic hits and suddenly your team is not really able to convene in the same way right having everyone Under One Roof kind of becomes impossible with the lockdowns happening across the country and I think the way that this company was set up was very like collaboratively collaborative in a physical way right everybody does need to come together and work in the lab and build these things um I mean was there a point during the beginning of the pandemic where you thought what kind of I mean we're in big trouble here yeah it was I I actually but it didn't last very long it was a challenge that how would we really work what will we really do sitting at home and how much planning or how much simulations can you really do right but luckily didn't last very long overall across multiple lockdowns all put together uh we would have sat at home maximum for 40 days across two years three years kind of a time period so I think it's far smaller and most of that came in the second lockdown which was really challenging because people were dying uh out there right so in the first lockdown we sat home for three days right and uh and while there was a lot of so to say uh pressure from the board as well to kind of just cut costs and be more Nimble and maybe five people we don't need and uh kind of leave away offices which we don't need and like a usual what was going on prepare for the worst to pay for the worst like Embrace and it's it's already going down and stuff like that but I was not comfortable with kind of holding people go or kind of making cutting those corners and and doing all of that and we said that let's see what we can do with the with a bunch of people and resources that we have and what we really knew to do is to create products and create Technologies and kind of do it for the first time in India and that's what we did right so I still remember we were just uh over uh I think over a Google meet call or something we were not using Zoom earlier for some reason we were using Google meet and uh I pankaj and Karthik were just different in our own houses we were kind of just uh having a drink over a Google meet and uh pankaj said oh I read about something uh called UV rays and UV disinfection and you can use UV to kind of kill germs and it kills bacteria and viruses very efficiently and uh I'm thinking of creating a small this thing for my home so that whatever stuff I'm getting in I can clean it and so that my family is not affected and it was just it was more of a hack for your own family rather than a product idea at that time and that was 20 I still remember the 24th of March 2020 because in the morning we had our board meeting and we were just chilling in the evening and we had heard in our board meeting there to cut costs uh let go of people and all of that thing was happening and then uh we're just discussing in the evening and I said why do it only for your home why can't we do this for the entire country and that's how uh the corona oven or the UV disinfection Journey started at that time three days in we had the product roadmap we had the simulations done uh fourth day we went back to the offices the 28th of March we were back in office we had the prototypes on 30th of March and uh by 11th of April we had the first lot going out uh of our partner factories right obviously you couldn't have set up a factory in that time period so we depended a lot on contract manufacturers and by the end of April we had six factories in Bangalore making that product so so I think that was Breakneck speed like by mid May we had 140 retailers in India selling our product there was nobody else who had launched it we had bought all inventory of UV lights in the country and people were really surprised so he called up I still remember we called her Philips that we want to buy UV lights and they were like why do you need UV lights because so UV light so far have in India have been used for water purifiers right and there was no other major use case of that and there was like all uh water purifier companies are actually sending back their inventory to us and you are the first ones calling and asking for large large sums of UV light what I'm going to do with it like you you don't need to bother about that are you willing to sell and you're able to get huge discounts so we picked up all the inventory and kind of uh did that uh we had even when the the whole uitis infection thing peaked in terms of a business we had 70 market share where even uh at that time I think there were some 50 companies which were making and like from small neighborhood shops to kind of companies like godrej uh were making those products and uh we had that and I think going through that uh kind of hustle of taking a product to Market in that period of time that changed the mindset a lot and I think one of the biggest thing that changed was the apprehension or fear of seeing a product hit Market I think I still remember when the first like I said on 11th of April when the first lot of carnovans were going out in the market I couldn't sleep that night I don't think Karthik was slept at night because you have that as a techie as a product uh designer or developer right you have that fear that when it goes to the market how it will work whether it will fail uh where there'll be challenges or that will do what you're supposed to do and this time we're talking about life and death so it was even more scary there's a lot of room for negative publicity as well right where people technically right if people have brought these into their homes they're trusting it to keep them safe and healthy and then suddenly something malfunctions now you've got a PR Nightmare on your hands right or correct I think I think we were not that attuned to kind of think about PR nightmares and all but just the product failing right and and uh some some uh like kind of any kind of accident happening with the user or the customer and all of those things so I think that was a challenge and what we have seen is to work with an ecosystem where nobody even knew how to test this product right there was no standards there was no lab which could very if I validate right so working with the government to create those standards to kind of make and people were doing random right people were just putting up one UV light in some random corner of a box and then saying it will disinfect oh so there were other people who were sort of exploring this as well so there were hundreds when we launched right and customers really wanted this product so they were as I said from neighborhood shops two large companies jumped into it right and and they were doing randomly whatever they could right just buying uh any LED UV light not even a UV tube light which is the most efficient one the UV LEDs don't work in this case and but people didn't know as long and some people even went to the extent that they just put a blue light in the Box to give it a feel of a UV light so that the customer thinks it's UV and they bought it because of cheap so all of that stuff was happening and then so we worked with the labs and with the government to kind of put a big in standards and testing protocols to say that okay yeah this is a verified product and this actually kills those viruses and problem was that the virus was also unknown right we didn't know about uh covid-19 as much as we know today right so nobody want to touch it nobody wanted to do any experiments on it right because everybody was super fearful so all of those operating in between all of those challenges I think that changed the mindset quite a bit okay was there any part of you though at that point you know you've sort of cracked this one cool product that's actually generating revenue for the company presumably your investors are excited as well like wow these guys have actually done something that's uh you know commercializable right um was there a part of you that thought like let's just do this like forget about uh aluminum fuel cells forget about EVS forget about all this other stuff let's just become a Corona oven company no not at all I don't think not at all while our investors then were not really excited actually oh really yeah they were they saw it as a distraction ah okay and I still remember kind of standing up in one of the meetings and and really putting my feet down and saying that I am not willing to kind of let our 20 people at a time with a small team right 20 25 people team who are really good at creating products code engineers and researchers and scientists sit on their asses for the entire lockdown I'm not willing to do that and you can go and sue me if you want but we're doing this WOW right and and now in the hindsight they would all clap because you did put your foot down yeah because we did make it work we did a healthy revenue and it was not like a product wherein for every penny earned because spending three dollars right it was not that case we were earning a very healthy cross margin and it was the entire business was profitable right so and and this was from day one right every product we sold we made a profit so from and and it was absolutely cash flow positive in the sense that there was no credit period we took advances to kind of make product and kind of provide products even from the government imagine that like government would never pay in advance we had Advanced payment from the government to kind of manufacture and sell so from that perspective a very good business but it always had a shelf life that was very very clear from day one that it's not going to be a product which will last forever because and it's inherent right uh people uh need these in the time of emergency and over time there are ways to build it into a business but it's not a mass scale business that way so that was very clear sure and there was you know you kind of reached that point where you started to see this shelf life starting to get close to expiry where the pandemic starts to die down after the second wave right people are getting back to the way that things used to be was it at that point that you guys started looking at getting back into aluminum fuel cells or had the had the sort of Outlook changed at that point within the company I think much earlier right so while we were at the peak of kranovan itself we realized that another two quarters it will fizzle out and all of that um and uh but other than we we could even know more the same log 9 of 2019 right we had changed a lot we had seen manufacturing at scale we had seen operations we had seen servicing in the field and all of that has already happened to us right so we're totally different into the organization and that time we said that so I still remember I I was sitting with hemant who's uh who was our head of Technology who is our head of Technology now as well right so he uh and I were discussing about the future of aluminum fuel cell and efficiencies and all of those things and we said that OV but as a part of the whole picture we also have this piece which is the battery right we have created this battery and uh and also we have now started to back in backward integrate the battery also by creating more advanced cells for it and we have at that time we had bought a cell line from ether right I don't know if many people know this so Aether had a cell line which uh they were they had put up uh over here to kind of experiment and develop cells in India itself oh okay right because I know that's kind of how they had started right back in the day before they even built their scooters I remember the batteries batteries yeah the co-founder was like this is the only thing that's worth focusing on is batteries yeah but then eventually so battery they still do right they make really good battery packs for their for their two wheelers right but battery pack and cell are two different ball games altogether right a battery pack is all about taking cells and putting in very efficient mechanical and electrical architecture on top of it in terms of BMS in terms of thermal management system wire harnesses and charging Profile Systems and all of that and picketting a battery pack where a cell is a very heavy Material Science chemistry fabric education and processing play not their not their uh they don't didn't really have the capability to continue developing no and there was no interest as well right because battery pack was good and their focus was more on the vehicle side and taking it to the market and then getting the brand around the two-wheeler right maybe you can ask that one more about it but sure sure but this was right up log nine materials alley because you guys are into the Material Sciences and this would actually make a lot of sense so so what they they sort of sold you the tech uh not the tech no tick right only the machine the machine was there in the RND lab so we just bought the machine in the r d lab right and uh and it worked well for us because uh we didn't have a lot of money at that time right so we could got it at 25 percent or 25 cents on a dollar right so that was really good for us and then that kind of kick-started our journey into the lithium and space uh on the sales side and battery pack we were anyway able to do from book your cells so we scaled up both these things started working with the oems with vehicle manufacturers and yeah so that's how the journey went forward so they so they sold you this machine which I mean just one side thought is that it's crazy that the difference between sort of success in this industry and and you know just not making any progress at all is just a single machine right you buy this machine and suddenly your capabilities and what you're able to accomplish goes through the roof right absolutely without that machine it's just not possible I think that's just really interesting because generally in the world of startups that's not the case right if you're building software you're even building some you know simple Hardware usually you can just sort of you got it together right but in this case you do need like a specialized machine absolutely and obviously we didn't have the funds to kind of buy a new one right and there were not many places you could buy that from so that uh in India for sure like obviously you can go and pay money outside and import it yeah but this machine they had already imported before and it was lying with them and so I think it was good for them as well and tarun was very happy to kind of set it to us because he could see at least this infra being used in a viable in a tangible Manner and not just sitting idle or being scrapped out so Aether sells you this uh machine and how like how quickly are you able to go from you know bringing this thing across the city to your location setting up up plugging it in whatever needs to happen to actually being able to take sort of lithium which I'm assuming you're sourcing from outside of India and creating cells the interesting story we didn't make lithium cells on on this machine itself while it was a lithium ion cell line foreign we didn't make lithium cells on it so we said because we what we were gunning for was very high power battery packs so we need very high power cells and what we first developed was super capacitors on this line so uh and that that's what uh we started developing we saw that okay if you do have super capacitors you can have very very high performance uh you can probably charge a battery pack in like one minute time and even lower and all of that but as we develop that cell we realize that no uh we have to bring in lithium to increase energy capacity so range so you cannot just solve for power but you have to also solve for energy in this case and that's how I remember that super cap Journey kind of enabled us to create a huge differentiation in the way we do lithium-ion cells so while Tesla offloads are talking about tablets cell technology I don't know if you have come across that so uh in cells you basically have to correct the current from the electrode into the outer circuit right so you have small pieces of metal which are welded on the electrodes and they take the current out so because it looks kind of just like the lid of the battery no no so see electrodes are like this uh foils so like a kitchen foil right so and on which some material is coated and now this foil uh is rolled up and put inside a cell in a casing uh like in a cylindrical piece or there are other formats but let's for the sake of argument in a cylindrical tube you put this uh roll this aluminum or whatever metal roll put it inside now you have to connect this metal roll to the external circuit so what people do is on this foil there are small strips of metal which are welded and those strips are connected to the outer circuit through that lid right so that lid is welded to that strip and that's how kind of it goes the current flows but what happens is when you have this metal strip uh there's a limitation on how much current that metal strip can carry and that kind of limits how fast you can charge or discharge the battery uh or a cell right so uh what what we do is that the future of the technology over there is that instead of the strip you have that entire foil connected to the outer circuit and that's called tablets design so there's no tab this strip is called a tab so Tesla started talking about it in 2021 that was when they kind of said that okay we would like to kind of pioneer and not Pioneer but like we would like to introduce tablets design in the human cells whereas supercap industry because it was always meant to be charged fast was always on the tablets design right so we were always working on this tablets design and that kind of uh kind of made give us a very good advancement on the Celtic on the lithium ion side because we had that understanding and experience of using a tablet structure rather than a tab based stuff so you're kind of I mean to simplify it you're able to take this super capacitor technology or a piece of it yeah and apply it to the lithium ion itself because it started there oh okay whereas most cell manufacturers in the lithium ion space will copy the tab design itself exactly which is probably not as efficient yeah okay and then there are other stuff so uh because we're doing super capacitors and we wanted to make them more uh environmentally efficient so we develop the entire process and know how to do aqueous processing of electrodes so instead of using very costly organic solvents I said why does why can't we use just water and create processes around that so that that know how also got transformed into our lithium and space yeah so I know uh you had bought this this sort of is it a robot I mean the the the cell machine that you're looking for carbon it's like an oven it's like a quarter writers you have foil going it's like a printing press okay so to speak right it's just kind of printing press where you have roll to roll like a newspaper printing machine right so that's one part of the machine and then once you have printed that newspaper you have to cut it in strips and those strips have to be rolled there is a rolling machine uh winding machine as we call it so that's another part so that bunch of different machines which are there required to make a cell sure so you buy this machine um even though you got it on a discount it's probably a very expensive purchase for the company money you're generating still probably a bit of money from the corona oven uh line of business but like how how are you guys doing financially at that point was it was it sort of like okay we need to think about what's our next like commercializable product or were you guys okay so one thing was that that urge or that itch to have a commercial product out there as soon as possible was exponentially higher or was Far higher than 2019 because you've now you've gotten a tape yeah we have tested the blood we have tasted blood right so that was very clear but one thing that happened in 2021 was at and sorry you know 21 2020. entire year of salaries in 2020 we didn't have to touch our Equity money we had we paid it by chronovan profits so for the entire year we uh were able to kind of pass the entire pandemic era without uh kind of losing any Capital that we had raised in 2019 so that was really good for the company for sustenance and then taking other more long-term tangible products to the market so you still had like a couple million in the bank basically yeah so we had that money available to us and then uh so that's what so we said that okay this battery pack that we created for aluminum fuel cell another application in two wheelers and three wheelers and uh so I started kind of doing prototypes uh we actually wanted to do two wheeler fast uh but then what happened was uh so our head of product uh which is ankush right so uh randomly one night we got a three wheeler from a company and I just came in it was a it was a really fascinating way because it's all yellow so he's like I'm not going home unless and I put a two wheeler battery in it and tried to run it what the worst can happen right so he just took out the battery that he designed to the two wheeler and put it on a three-wheeler and because our batteries were very really high power it could run it and we had a prototype of a three wheeler running with a battery Tree in 30 minutes so that actually kind of expedited the journey into launching in three wheelers and then it was very quick so we gave out OEM samples uh within two months kind of a time period started the approval process and uh in less than um I think nine ten months time uh we started a set of manufacturing for those battery packs and started selling out products and within and that was in December 2021 so December 21 we were already ready to kind of sell out battery packs for three wheelers and uh by March of the Ranger 2 are three wheeler battery packs were already number two on the leadership board in the market in the trivial category so osm Omega sticky Mobility is our partner right so there were also a new OEM and just scaling up when we started with them in December they were doing 30 40 battery 3043 wheelers a month by March they were doing 300. and by April May they had taken over Mahindra and monthly sales volume so because the the propositions were so awesome right uh as compared to a three-wheeler taking three four hours charging time we offered 30 minutes right and as compared to that battery having a two-year life and not even delivering that we offered a battery with more than 15 years of life with a warranty of six years unlimited number of kilometers so no matter how much you run it your warranty would not get voided and at the same time with very high load bearing capacity reliability and all of that built into it and safety more than anything else it was the safest battery pack out there that's incredible that's I mean that is true disruption right three hours to 30 minutes yeah um that's massive was it mainly uh regular everyday individual consumers that were purchasing a lot of these three wheelers or was it mainly Fleet operators that are buying in both Elite operators so this is a majorly Fleet operators and uh these are three wheeler cargo vehicles uh so that's what we started with and that's where we got scale and uh they could do multiple shifts so that was the motivation for them I'm a little scared to ask this question because I I we risk like moving too deep into the technology but I'm just curious like how is it that you're like was it this was it the super capacitor uh sort of tech that you implemented in the lithium ion cells that that was the big differentiator where you go from three hours to 30 minutes no so um because I'm just I'm shocked at the other existing players hadn't already figured this out this technology out yeah so I think uh uh what so as we are creating this battery bank for aluminum fuel cell right so we had two options uh for creating a very high power and long life battery pack uh one was super capacitors and the other was lto the lithium titanate lithium-ion battery pack right ATO is a chemistry which has been available in the world it has not taken up that much traction but it is a very powerful chemistry you can charge it discharge it very quickly it has a very long life and what he realized was that given lto is available and it is there super cap doesn't make any sense it's too low on energy that it really is not valuable right it would not be able to scale so lto was a choice and then that lto cell helped us kind of create a battery pack uh which could kind of scale and then give all these features one thing that we realize in this process is that lot of times in India we neglect Solutions and Technologies because they could not work in other geographies not realizing that our requirements and our needs are different uh as compared to what works in U.S Europe China or whatever other places right uh and that's the reason we were able to make a difference right we said okay it might not have scaled over there because there are requirements were very different but we need something which can work consistently in very high temperatures we need something which can be charged very quickly we need something which can take heavy duty heavy duty usage we abuse our vehicles like literally abuse especially in the commercial segment we abuse Vehicles left right at the center so it uh it has to be a battery which is very reliable resilient safe uh can is okay being abused and at the same time offers you very high power and can be charged quickly in life and all of those things so so that's how uh it kind of happened and we went into the lto and we we still had a Pioneer in the in uh in terms of launching and bringing lto into the Indian market and making it mainstream right and that I'll tell you very a very interesting fact for the for the entire period between middle 20 2020 where we were sure that we're going ahead and we'll be launching these battery packs in the market to April of 22.

we didn't not even in a single place we disclose that to the relative battery and the reason was that we didn't want the Prejudice of lto not working in other markets to kind of plague its deployment in India wow so you kept it under wraps you're just like yeah we've developed something cool you can charge your battery in 30 minutes instead of three hours don't worry about the tech it just works yeah and we'll let people assume whatever they wanted to assume somebody wanted somebody assumed it's aluminum battery somebody assumed it's a super capacitor somebody else here is a hybrid some lithium super capacitor hybrid like you also said right now right so we let people we didn't correct them but we didn't also confirm them so people were making their own presumptions and that kind of worked and and then uh the last version of our day zero right uh we kind of announced that okay this is an lto battery pack and this is how we are making it better and this is a roadmap going forward so that's when people got to know okay this is what the underlying Tech is wow it just blows my mind though that the difference between this highly disruptive technology that you guys built and what the competitors were building right these sort of Legacy players it's it's just a matter of thinking outside the box right that's all it really took and and I think a lot of that like you said like a lot of the time Indians or or anyone really like we just look and see what other people are doing true and we assume that okay they're doing that for a reason we need to follow what they're doing right yeah people think that they would know better right but they might know better for their circumstances they they would not they necessarily don't know better for your circumstances and that's where the problem lies yeah and and meanwhile there's this sort of little company based out of Bengaluru that's sort of innovating and thinking okay there's like this uh this technology Gap here that nobody else seems to have identified let's just build that Tech and then suddenly you become um oh I don't know where you are in the market right now when it comes to to three wheelers like where do you stand as compared to these so we have 20 market share in the three wheeler cargo segment right and this happened in less than a year's time incredible right and uh by uh the next year next financial year 524 we will be at least at 40 market share and now we have two wheelers we have four wheelers and bus truck applications coming in so it will be widespread across vehicle segments wow so they just they just didn't see it coming yeah that's amazing and I say small Bengaluru based startup but really I think things have changed quite a bit again since we last talked because I remember like I could probably have pointed out each of your employees you know within that space though yeah like your old old office um how big are you guys right now so we have more than 600 people now um at that time when we met last I think we were 20 25 people um so it has really grown uh in that sense out of the 600 people um maybe 650 now uh we have around 300 people around full-time roles so across r d across product development to operations sales Business Development amazing and it started with the three-wheeler and that one day where you guys decided to just hack this thing together and it worked yeah and then what was the step from there to two wheelers you had mentioned that you guys were already working on that in parallel was it soon after the launch of this so two wheeler had been a jinx product for us so far like while we uh now have scale on that but it took much much longer than expected and there were multiple things one is uh that a um the two wheeler platform for commercial applications right uh is something which has not been done right in the country right people had really not put in the effort to make the right product for a delivery application like a food delivery or e-commerce delivery and that's what you're targeting right a long life battery is more valuable for a B2B operation uh rather than a b2c where it is not used enough fleets of of two wheelers or whatever whatever like all of these Ecom companies right so so that is where these two wheelers were supposed to be used and uh the the platforms really were not very tangible and so that was one problem uh the second problem was that uh moment we were just ready to launch and we and second one was that like the three wheeler we got just able to I got out of luck I would say I don't know what but we were just able to move faster the the the urge to go to market was equally or more so in our partner osm uh to kind of uh that fire in the belly was really there to kind of work together and kind of uh do those hacks and do whatever it needed to kind of take the product to Market as fast as possible so it was equally burning requirement on both sides so that's why it happened much faster and then uh as we were going to launch two wheelers also then all the fire started to happen right so we have seen n number of fires yes last year right and as those fires had to happen uh just for clarity like basically the the electric two-wheelers that got Indian companies were manufacturing were literally catching on fire you leave them out in the sun and they just start burning correct yeah right so and we had n number of cases of that and people even died in many of those accidents right so what happened with that was that our batteries were there for approval and certification and uh uh there was almost a complete embargo on any new certifications of two wheeler batteries this was this was after you guys had tried to get certification or yeah we were when it was in the process of getting certified and this is like mid last year which is really bad luck which is really bad luck right so it's there it is the safest battery out there like we were really proven it that you can literally throw it in open flame it will not catch fire and no matter what you do with it you drill through the cells you kind of cut it you kind of throw it from a rooftop it will not catch fire you burn it and like you really put enough hardness and try to burn it to not catch fire so but the point is that uh if the certification is just not coming through for anybody like you are part of that gang and why that happened was because the fires were happening so the government was trying to figure out how to make Corrections in the ecosystem so they were working on new standards and and they were concerning with us as well but our packs couldn't get cleared off so that kind of delayed the entire two-wheeler launch for at least good three four quarters and then finally in January we were able to this January were able to get the certification and it started rolling them out congratulations yeah I remember seeing your newsletter I think all the way back in it must have been 20 some sometime in 2020 or 2021 where you guys announced this technology it's like a prototype and you're testing it out with different uh you know these businesses like for example the delivery I think correct I'm not sure which of the companies you had started uh piloting this with but yeah it seemed like it was just around the corner and then I I remember every month reading the newsletter and I'm like wait what happened with the two-wheelers why isn't this uh actually other than taken to this to Market and now I understand why it was because of this and even and especially in the two wheeler side the specs were even better because there was no charging intra constraint right so our three wheeler batteries can also be charged in 10 minutes but we offer 30 minutes because then if you have to charge in 10 minutes then you have to kind of put up a propriety charger right and that we didn't want to do it has to be on public charging infra but a two wheeler on a public charging and fast charging uh fast public charging infra can be charged in 12 minutes so it was even more compelling in terms of value prop and all of those things but yeah this happened got it I know I remember during our first conversation in 2019 you were talking about the early days and how it was basically like uh sort of like a shed or a warehouse that your family owned and you set everything up in there it was in that warehouse was the day that you sort of started right day Zero it would have been April 21st of was it 2015 2015 yeah and now here we are like uh what is it eight eight years later eight years later yeah wow and again you're celebrating this thing with what you guys have created now this concept of the event day zero right which I think last year 2022 was the first time that you celebrated it April 21st 2022 now you guys are doing it again um presumably uh you're gonna be sort of talking about some new things that you've been working on maybe things that you've kept Under Wraps I don't know what you're like allowed to tell me and and what you're keeping confidential for the day of the event uh because this you know this conversation will go live before the event happens uh but maybe just film fill me in on the things that you can tell me about yeah it's actually the concept of day Zero came in last year right and uh what we wanted to do was kind of really uh build in public and hold ourselves accountable in the public perception that's saying it okay we're committing to something and we'll come back next year and give you an update and tell you more about what we're gonna do in the next 12 months so that's how the concept a0 came in and we call it day Zero because we didn't want to say okay we have already moved this distance if we move this distance but rather like looking at climbing Peaks so you climb one Peak and you suggest size eyes towards the next week that was the whole concept of day Zero so last year we the biggest announcement that we made last year was to set up India's largest cell manufacturing facility and not just India but Southeast Asia's largest cell manufacturing facility and we said and we hosted it in a place or in our head office uh uh where it was come out to come up so people are really sitting on that piece of land where that facility was going to show up in 12 months time was it just like sort of dirt at that point like it was a shed yeah it was a shed it was called like a skeleton of what would eventually so it was a shed and uh we were inside uh that shed but it was like just uh open like it was just a hall right and nothing inside and that's where we hosted our day zero first day Zero so to speak the event uh in 2022 and now this 21st of April day 023 uh it's already it's gonna get inaugurated and Southeast Asia will have its first settlement manufacturing line wow that's huge the fact that it's the largest in Southeast Asia is just an incredible achievement and I think a testament to again how far you guys have come to becoming like an extremely because I remember like when we when we sat down last time like you guys were still working on the aluminum fuel cell not to say that you aren't still right you're still working on that probably more stealthily like just sort of behind the scenes yep um but at that time I think it was you know there was a lot of debate I remember reading through the comments on YouTube and people are like these guys are never gonna make it like this is like uh too futuristic technology it's never gonna work and now right 2023 it's it's just incredible to see that you are now like a highly respected and recognized player in this space uh a company to be reckoned with right you're actually like taking on giants like you're talking about Mahindra and how you are going to probably end up reaching 40 market share in that electric three-wheeler space like that's that's uh that's a huge accomplishment and I'm sure Mahindra and other big players are sort of sweating right they're like oh gosh like how did we how do we miss this like elevator and CS called see them as competitors I think uh the battery player you can supply to anybody fair enough fair enough um but yeah I just think it's so cool yeah so I've come such a long way and and I can't wait to see where things go from here Akshay single founder of log 9 materials and by the way for anyone wondering whether the recent discovery of a lithium reserves in jamun Kashmir is gonna affect log9 actually is pretty sure that it's gonna take a while before it has any meaningful impact on their business it's easily a five to seven year process before you get there because today it's nothing more than an inferred Reserve so there's a difference between a inferred reserve and actual result right so there's an estimate there's a huge amount of estimation which has gone in in saying that okay this is the size of the reserve and this is how much would potentially be extractable but then when you finally go and do more uh surveys and do more analysis and you find the actual tangibility of that Reserve that still needs to happen sure but also very scary to start settings up in such a dangerous part of the country it's a beautiful part though oh yeah no doubt about that thank you so much for watching or listening to the show this week and I'll catch you in the next one

2023-04-20 09:10

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