Battery maker Amara Raja invests in five-year-old startup Log 9

• Log 9 Materials has raised $8.5 million in its Series A round.
• It would use the capital to further develop its rapid charging system and aluminum-ion batteries.
• AC Ventures, Exfinity Ventures and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge also participated in the round.

Bengaluru-based advanced battery technology startup Log 9 Materials has raised $8.5 million in a Series A funding round led by industrial and automotive battery maker Amara Raja Batteries (ARBL).

The 36-year-old company — that has a market cap of over ₹12,000 crore — would infuse $5 million in the Bengaluru-based startup as a part of this deal. The deal is a part of the battery giant’s 'Energy and Mobility' strategy to enter new green technologies and solutions.

“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,” Vikramadithya Gourineni, executive director at ARBL, said.

The rest $3.5 million in Log 9 Material’s Series A round was infused by both new and old investors, including AC Ventures, Exfinity Ventures and Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator programme Surge.

Blackbuck’s cofounders Rajesh Yabaji and Chanakya Hridaya, Premji Invest’s partner Rajesh Ramaiah, Equinor’s Desikan Sundarajan and Emirates Investment Authority’s Faiz Mayalakkara also participated in the round.

Founded by Akshay Singhal in 2015 at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee’s incubation centre TIDES, Log 9 Materials is a deeptech startup that focuses on battery technology for electric vehicles as well as other appliances.

The company plans to use this latest funding to expand its production capacity and business development efforts for the latest innovation, Rapid Charging Battery technology. The latest technology has completed its pilots successfully and will be rolled out for commercial use in October 2021.

A part of the capital would also be used to advance other innovations like supercapacitor and aluminum fuel cell-based innovations. Supercapacitors are electrochemical energy storage devices that use power from the product/vehicle itself to power it. For instance, a supercapacitor would capture energy generated when a bus brakes and use it to start the bus again.

Aluminium fuel cells are aluminium-air batteries (AI-air batteries) that produce electricity from oxygen and aluminium reactions.

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