Meine Electric raises Rs 6.7 crore in funding; founder says, 'India will win the energy transition when...'

Meine Electric, which claims to be APAC’s first iron-air long-duration energy storage (LDES) innovator, has raised $750,000 (~Rs 6.7 crore) in a pre-seed funding round from Antler, Rebalance, Venture Catalysts, gradCapital and AIC-AU Incubation Foundation (the incubator hosted by Anna University).

The round also saw participation from angel investors, including industry veteran Alexander Hogeveen Rutter.

The startup will use the raised capital to accelerate transition from laboratory-scale prototypes to pilot-ready iron-air battery systems.

Founded in 2023 by Priyansh Mohan and Stuti Kakkar, Meine Electric claims that it has successfully demonstrated its proprietary iron-air battery technology to be a long-duration battery capable of working at less than $0.05/kWh (~Rs 4/kWh) levelised cost of storage.

Unlike global peers, the startup has developed the technology capable of faster charge & discharge to enable integration with solar-heavy grids.

While lithium-ion batteries can store power for only a few hours before becoming financially infeasible, the startup said its iron-air battery technology has been developed as a 16-24 hour battery solution capable of getting fully charged within 8 hours, matching the typical solar surplus window, making them a critical energy infrastructure that ensures Round-the-Clock (RTC) renewable energy coverage for current and future energy grids.

“India will win the energy transition when clean power becomes dispatchable, not intermittent. Our focus for the last three years has been to make iron-air chemistry stable and repeatable. Now we are proving it for the grid and C&I power requirements, building the evidence that iron-air storage can become a backbone asset for the world’s renewable-first future,” said Priyansh Mohan, co-founder and CEO, Meine Electric.

“Lithium-ion has shown its capability in peaking and integrating renewables over short duration. However, as renewable penetration rises above 50%, long duration energy storage is required to fully replicate the grid and system benefits of conventional generation. Having seen dozens of LDES technologies, Meine Electric is one of the strongest I have seen globally. Solutions like Meine Electric’s are already required for off-grid and replacing diesel gensets and will increasingly be required at the grid scale as renewable penetration continues to increase,” said Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, Third Derivative.

“What impressed us about Meine Electric is the depth of their electrochemical research paired with system-level execution - a team that has spent years turning a hard science problem into a repeatable, grid-ready solution. At Antler, we back founders building foundational infrastructure for the future, and we believe Meine can become a globally relevant platform for renewable-first power systems.” said Gowri Shankar Nagarajan, Associate Partner at Antler.

Meine Electric operates from a 5,000 sq ft facility in Chennai that is actively being outfitted for pilot production, enabling the transition from lab prototypes to pilot-ready systems.

The startup is building a multi-kW grid connected prototype, followed by larger pilot units, as part of its plan to deliver turnkey, containerised iron-air battery systems by 2027. It will also focus on strengthening the team and research infrastructure and deepening partnerships with Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Energy Intensive C&I customers for pilot adoption.