Startup Deep Dive : Log9 Materials — the battery bet that lost to a price war

Log9 Materials raised more than $60 million in equity from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme, Amara Raja Batteries and Malaysia’s Petronas over five years, on a promise that India could build its own fast-charging battery chemistry instead of importing one. By November 2025, the company that wanted to out-engineer Chinese cells could not find the ₹6.7 crore its own lender was asking for, and the Bengaluru bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) pushed it into insolvency instead.

The strange part is that Log9 was not undone by a bad product. Independent lab and field data on its cells held up. It was undone by a rival chemistry’s falling cost curve on the other side of the world, and by a leasing business it built to sell that chemistry faster than the market wanted to buy it.

Quick facts

What they do

Log9 Materials makes lithium-based battery cells and packs, and sells them mainly to makers and operators of electric two-wheelers and three-wheelers in India. Its flagship RapidX range, launched in 2020, was built around lithium titanate oxide (LTO) chemistry, pitched on a charge time of roughly 15 minutes, a cycle life the company put at 10,000 or more charge-discharge cycles, and an operating range from about -30°C to 60°C, wide enough for both Indian summers and Himalayan winters. Buyers of its cells and packs have included EV makers such as Omega Seiki Mobility and Hero Electric, and its batteries were tested by fleet operators including Shadowfax, Flipkart, Amazon and Delhivery, according to company and trade-press reporting. Alongside cells, Log9 ran an EV leasing arm that put batteries and vehicles into the hands of fleet operators directly, and, until October 2024, a separate line of business supplying battery technology for Indian Railways and electric trucks.

The origin

Akshay Singhal graduated in materials engineering from IIT Roorkee in 2015 and, by his own account, spent a research stint at the University of Alberta in Canada wondering what his years of nanotechnology training were actually for. A month after graduating, he incorporated Log9 Materials with classmate Kartik Hajela and Pankaj Sharma, making it the first startup to come out of IIT Roorkee’s TIDES incubator, as reported by Founder Thesis. The company’s original insight was not about batteries at all: it was about graphene, a one-atom-thick form of carbon that Singhal’s research had shown could dramatically improve energy storage and catalysis. Log9’s earliest commercial bet was aluminium-air fuel cells, and a graphene-based oil-spill sorbent pad sold through a small subsidiary, Log9 Spill Containment. It was only around 2017, as the founders read the climate and mobility trends coming out of India’s push for electric vehicles, that Log9 redirected its graphene and nanomaterial science toward battery cells, according to company accounts reported by HandWiki and Inc42.

The struggle years

Log9’s first pivot, from aluminium-air fuel cells and graphene products to battery cells, happened quietly around 2017, before the company had scaled either business. Its second came in 2021, when it committed its manufacturing roadmap to LTO chemistry over more common lithium-ion formats, betting that fast charging and long cycle life would beat the lower upfront cost of rival chemistries. That bet needed a factory: Log9 committed ₹150 crore to a cell-manufacturing plant in Bengaluru’s Jakkur area, planned for roughly 50 MWh of annual capacity and originally meant to go live in 2022. It began commercial operations only in April 2023, well behind schedule, as documented in Inc42’s reporting on the company’s later collapse.

The third and most damaging turn came in 2024. As Chinese lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell prices collapsed, Log9 tried to pivot a second time, this time toward LFP, but the shift came after its cost base was already committed to LTO’s more expensive inputs. By September 2024, the company had begun laying off staff; Inc42 reported that it dismissed 115 contractual employees that month alone and delayed salary payments into the following January. Layoffs continued through the rest of the year, cutting the workforce from an estimated 220–350 people to fewer than 40 by early 2025, and shutting operations in Hyderabad, Jaipur, Mumbai and Chennai, leaving only Bengaluru and Delhi offices, both largely inactive, per Inc42’s May 2025 feature on the company’s decline. In December 2024, co-founder and chief operating officer Kartik Hajela resigned after nine years at the company and joined Jupiter Electric Mobility, a move Inc42 reported the same month.

The turning point

The single event that broke Log9’s economics was a price war it did not start. Through 2024, the landed price of Chinese-made LFP battery cells fell from roughly $95 per kWh to somewhere between $45 and $53 per kWh, according to Inc42’s reporting, which cited company and industry sources. Log9’s LTO cells, built for speed and longevity rather than raw cost, were landing at close to $350 per kWh, a gap of more than four times. A chemistry designed to justify a premium on charging speed could not survive a world where the cheaper alternative was also improving fast enough to close the performance gap. Log9 co-founder Pankaj Sharma later acknowledged as much publicly, noting that LFP battery quality had improved substantially since the company first bet against it. The numbers either side of that turning point are stark: a company that had raised over $60 million and built a dedicated ₹150 crore cell plant on one side, and a Chinese commodity cost curve moving faster than its own manufacturing roadmap on the other.

The money behind it

Log9’s capital came in four visible rounds. In October 2019, it raised a $3.5 million Series A led by Exfinity Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge accelerator programme, as reported by Inc42 at the time; Surge’s backing gave the young company early institutional credibility. In August 2021, Amara Raja Batteries, one of India’s largest lead-acid battery manufacturers, led an $8.5 million round, as reported by Business Standard, marking the point where a listed industrial player rather than a pure financial investor became Log9’s anchor backer. Amara Raja returned in September 2022 with a further ₹77 crore (about $9.65 million), a deal Entrackr reported valued Log9 at roughly $213 million (₹1,700 crore) and took Amara Raja’s stake to about 15.4%. Then, in January 2023, Log9 closed a $40 million Series B combining equity and debt, led jointly by Amara Raja Batteries and Malaysian state energy major Petronas Ventures, with participation from Incred Financial Services, Unity Small Finance Bank, Oxyzo Financial Services and Western Capital Advisors; Entrackr put the valuation at that point at $230–240 million, broadly consistent with Tracxn’s later-listed figure of around ₹1,900 crore. Those two Entrackr reports, from September 2022 and January 2023, are the only independently documented valuation marks; no fresh primary round has been reported since, so any figure after early 2023 should be read as a stale, reported number rather than a current one.

Each of the three main backers changed something concrete. Sequoia’s Surge gave Log9 its first outside validation and seed-stage discipline. Amara Raja gave it an industrial anchor, a battery-manufacturing partner with distribution reach who kept re-investing across three rounds and became its largest strategic shareholder. Petronas gave it its largest single cheque and a global energy major’s imprimatur, useful for a company chasing export and cross-border manufacturing partnerships. Total disclosed equity raised across these rounds comes to a little over $60 million, per Inc42’s account; other trackers such as Tracxn put cumulative funding, including debt facilities, closer to $90 million, a gap worth naming rather than resolving in Log9’s favour, since venture debt behaves very differently from equity when a company runs out of cash.

How it makes money

Log9 earned revenue in three ways. The core business sold battery cells and finished packs to electric two- and three-wheeler manufacturers and to fleet operators, priced on a straightforward per-kWh or per-pack basis, similar to any component supplier. A second line leased batteries and, in some structures, entire vehicles to fleet operators, collecting revenue over time rather than upfront; this leasing arm grew the fastest of the three. A third, smaller line, until October 2024, supplied railway traction batteries and electric-truck battery systems, work that culminated in a pilot with Indian Railways and a Vande Bharat-related order alongside Siemens.

The part people got wrong about Log9 was treating it purely as a deep-tech cell manufacturer, when an increasing share of its revenue growth between FY22 and FY24 was coming from the leasing arm, which is closer to an asset-financing business than a materials-science one. That distinction mattered enormously once cash ran short: when Log9 could not service its obligations, financiers including Revfin, Alt Mobility and Gentari began repossessing the leased vehicles carrying its batteries, according to Inc42’s reporting, converting a working-capital squeeze into a customer-facing collapse almost overnight. Margins, where they existed, sat in the premium customers were willing to pay for faster charging and longer cycle life; once that premium evaporated against cheaper LFP alternatives, the underlying leasing exposure had no cushion left to absorb the shock.

The numbers

Figures below are drawn from company filings as reported by Inc42; profit and loss figures for FY22 were not available in the sources reviewed and are omitted rather than estimated.

Revenue grew 48.2% year-on-year from FY23 to FY24, but losses grew faster in absolute terms, and Inc42 estimated FY24 EBITDA at around -₹73.9 crore, meaning the business was burning cash before even accounting for interest, depreciation and one-off costs. By the time of its NCLT filing in November 2025, outstanding debt had climbed past ₹200 crore against a company whose annual revenue had only just crossed ₹110 crore, a debt-to-revenue ratio that left almost no room for a slow chemistry pivot.

Where the money comes from

Geographically, Log9’s business was concentrated almost entirely within India, serving the domestic two- and three-wheeler EV market rather than exporting cells, despite periodic talk of partnerships with international players such as Japan’s Musashi Seimitsu and US-based Zeta Energy, both of which stalled as Log9’s financial position worsened. By segment, the surprise is how much of the company’s later revenue depended on its EV leasing operations rather than on outright cell or pack sales, according to Inc42’s account of the company’s financials; a company that marketed itself on nanomaterial science and nine-figure patent counts was, by FY24, substantially a fleet-financing business wearing a deep-tech label. The railway and electric-truck battery division, sold to Jupiter Electric Mobility for a reported ₹40 crore in the deal signed on 30 October 2024, had been a smaller but technically prestigious sliver of the business, built around Indian Railways pilots; its sale left Log9’s remaining operations even more dependent on the strained two- and three-wheeler leasing book.

The risks

Three risks, each with a visible mechanism, explain most of what happened to Log9. First, commodity and chemistry risk: LTO’s cost structure depends on materials and processes more expensive than mainstream LFP, so any sustained fall in competing cell prices directly erodes the premium Log9 needed to charge, and Chinese LFP pricing fell by roughly half within a single year. Second, asset-financing exposure inside a hardware company: by leasing batteries and vehicles rather than only selling them, Log9 took on financier and fleet-operator counterparty risk that a pure component seller would not carry, so when cash ran short, third-party financiers such as Revfin and Alt Mobility could repossess assets carrying Log9’s brand and batteries, publicly visible evidence of distress. Third, working-capital and governance risk: disputes such as the one with fleet operator BluWheelz, where each side accused the other of owing crores in unpaid dues, and reported defaults to more than 20 vendors, point to a company that had run out of buffer well before its lender took it to the NCLT in November 2025 over a comparatively small ₹6.7 crore default.

The takeaway

Log9’s story is a reminder that a deep-tech company can execute its own roadmap reasonably well and still be destroyed by someone else’s cost curve. Its cells reportedly charged fast, lasted long cycle counts and worked across a wide temperature band, exactly as promised; the company was undone because it had built its entire pricing logic on being faster than a rival chemistry, and that rival chemistry got both cheaper and better at the same time, on a manufacturing base in another country that Log9 had no way to match. The transferable lesson is not “avoid hard technology bets.” It is to avoid staking a business on a single point of technical superiority against a competitor whose costs are set by a scale advantage you cannot replicate, and to keep leasing or financing exposure small enough that a slow pivot does not become an existential one.

Frequently asked questions

What does Log9 Materials make?

Log9 Materials makes lithium titanate oxide (LTO) and, more recently, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells and packs, sold mainly to electric two- and three-wheeler manufacturers and fleet operators in India under its RapidX brand.

Who founded Log9 Materials and when?

Dr Akshay Singhal, Kartik Hajela and Pankaj Sharma founded Log9 Materials in 2015, incubated at IIT Roorkee’s TIDES business incubator, initially working on graphene and aluminium-air fuel cell technology before moving into lithium battery cells around 2017.

How much funding has Log9 Materials raised?

Log9 raised a little over $60 million in equity across four disclosed rounds between 2019 and 2023, from investors including Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Exfinity Venture Partners, Amara Raja Batteries and Petronas Ventures, according to Inc42; other trackers that include debt facilities put cumulative funding closer to $90 million.

Why did Log9 Materials go into insolvency?

The Bengaluru bench of the NCLT admitted Log9 Materials and its subsidiary Log9 Mobility into insolvency on 13 November 2025 after a combined default of ₹6.7 crore to lender Ghalla & Bhansali Securities, following a broader cash crunch that had already produced mass layoffs, over ₹200 crore in debt and asset repossessions through 2024 and 2025.

What is Log9 Materials’ current status?

As of September 2026, Log9 Materials remains in a Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process under an NCLT-appointed resolution professional; expressions of interest for a resolution plan closed on 11 February 2026 and an evaluation matrix was issued days later, with no publicly confirmed buyer or approved plan at the time of writing.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Inc42, “The Log9 Collapse: How The Battery Tech Startup Fell From Glory”, May 2025
• Inc42, “Exclusive: NCLT Sends Log9 Into Insolvency After INR 6.7 Cr Default”, November 2025
• Inc42, “Log9 Materials Financials 2026 – Revenue, P&L & Cash Flow” (profit-loss data), 2026
• Inc42, “Log 9 Materials Bags $3.5 Mn From Exfinity Venture, Sequoia’s Surge”, October 2019
• Inc42, “Kartik Hajela Resigns As Log9 COO, Joins Jupiter Electric Mobility”, December 2024
• Inc42, “Amid Automation Push, Log9 Fires 115 Contractual Employees”, September 2024
• Entrackr, “Log9 Materials rakes in fresh capital at over $210 Mn valuation”, September 2022
• Entrackr, “Battery tech startup Log9 raises $40 Mn in Series B round”, January 2023
• Business Standard, “Log 9 Materials raises $8.5 mn in funding round led by Amara Raja Batteries”, August 2021
• Lexology / SCC Online, “Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. advises Jupiter Electric Mobility on the acquisition of the technology and business assets of Log 9 Materials Scientific Private Limited”, November 2024
• Business Standard, “Jupiter Wagons jump 7% as arm acquires Log9’s tech and business assets”, October 2024
• Founder Thesis, “Dr. Akshay Singhal’s Log9 Materials journey: From Deep Tech Innovation to Near Death Experience”, 2024
• Tracxn, “Log9 Materials – Company Profile, Funding & Latest Shareholding”, accessed September 2026

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