Lithium has become the default choice for battery-powered systems, but its limitations — from volatile supply chains to short lifespans — are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Offgrid Energy Labs, a deep-tech startup based in India, wants to make lithium less central, especially when it comes to battery storage.
The 7-year-old startup, incubated at IIT Kanpur, has developed a proprietary zinc-bromine-based battery system as an alternative to lithium-ion technology. Called ZincGel, it delivers 80-90% of the energy efficiency of conventional lithium batteries, but at a significantly lower levelized cost of storage, the startup said.
As power demand grows worldwide, countries are ramping up efforts to expand renewable energy storage. India, as a prominent nation in this regard, aims to increase its non-fossil energy capacity tenfold — from 50 gigawatts to 500 gigawatts — by 2030. New Delhi is also targeting 236 gigawatt-hours of battery energy storage capacity by 2031-32 and announced a ₹54 billion (roughly $612 million) funding plan in June to develop 30 gigawatt-hour battery storage systems in the country. However, like many global markets, India faces a key challenge: China’s dominance over the lithium supply chain.
Offgrid Energy Labs is betting that its ZincGel battery technology can ease supply constraints by using widely available materials and offering a more cost-effective alternative to lithium-based systems.
Now, the startup has raised $15 million in Series A funding to scale up its operations. It plans to build a 10-megawatt-hour demonstration facility in the U.K., expected to be ready by the first quarter of 2026, and begin commercializing ZincGel in the quarters that follow — with a gigafactory in India planned as the next phase.
“Not only should we be addressing a gap in the market from an application standpoint, but we should also make it financially viable, because there have been technologies and batteries in the past globally, which have the solution, but they’re so expensive that they’re not widely adopted,” said Tejas Kusurkar, co-founder and CEO of Offgrid Energy Labs, in an interview.
Kusurkar, who has a PhD from IIT Kanpur, co-founded Offgrid Energy Labs in 2018 at the institute’s Startup Incubation and Innovation Center, along with Brindan Tulachan (also a PhD from IIT Kanpur), Rishi Srivastava, and Ankur Agarwal. The team observed that while lithium batteries are well-suited for mobility, the stationary storage market was underserved — and needed batteries that are safer, more resilient, and built on a supply chain that is easier to access, Kusurkar told TechCrunch.
The startup spent its first six years developing battery technology and has so far secured more than 25 IP families and over 50 IP assets across markets, including the U.S., U.K., and India, as well as China, Australia, and Japan. The battery is based on zinc-bromide chemistry with a proprietary water-based electrolyte, resulting in a low risk of fire.
ZincGel is also capable of handling longer discharges (6-12 hours) multiple times throughout its lifetime and can last twice as long as a typical lithium-ion battery, Kusurkar said. Furthermore, the battery utilizes a carbon-based cathode for both fast charging and discharging.
Zinc in batteries is not a new concept, and some companies have already offered zinc-bromide-based batteries, including the Nasdaq-listed EOS Energy Enterprises. However, Kusurkar noted that Offgrid Energy Labs uses its patented assets that help bring down the cost. The ZincGel batteries can also reduce the need for using graphite, which helps bring down their production cost.
“Ultimately, customers care about the same performance, better price, or better performance, same price,” Srivastava told TechCrunch.
Offgrid Energy Labs’ technology is also designed to allow for tweaking or sub-optimizing the battery based on the application. This means that these zinc batteries can operate independently of environmental conditions and provide energy storage even at temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius, Srivastava said.
The startup is targeting industries with net-zero goals that want to maximize renewable energy use by integrating battery storage. Its batteries are also being explored for applications such as peak shifting and decentralized, off-grid energy solutions. Shell — which invested in Offgrid during its seed round through its corporate venture arm — and Tata Power are among the early testers. The start is also in talks with global players, including Europe’s Enel Group, to develop batteries tailored to their specific use cases.
So far, Offgrid Energy Labs has built its battery tech manually at a tinkering lab in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida. However, the startup plans to leverage its facility in the U.K. to demonstrate its technology to early customers next year.
The U.K. facility will have a carbon footprint 50% lower than that of a typical lithium battery gigafactory, Srivastava said, adding that the startup has opted for simpler manufacturing processes to reduce both capital and operational expenses.
Asked why the U.K. — and not India — was chosen for its first facility, Srivastava said Europe offers a strong ecosystem and is already a hub for battery manufacturing. The startup already has co-founders Kusurkar and Tulachan based in the U.K. to help with local operations. Still, the startup sees India as one of its key markets once the batteries are ready for commercialization in 2026.
The Series A round was led by Archean Chemicals, a Chennai-based specialty chemicals manufacturer, which now holds a 21% stake in the startup, along with participation from Ankur Capital.
Srivastava told TechCrunch that Archean’s participation is a strategic alignment, as the publicly listed company has considerable expertise in bromine manufacturing and supply chain management.
The startup is valued at around $58 million post-money.
