India's Sodium-Ion Battery Race: 3 Startups to Watch

Three Indian startups are betting that sodium-ion chemistry—not lithium-ion—could be the next battery technology to scale domestically, using locally sourced materials ranging from farm-waste biomass to patented hard carbon anodes.

The players

Rechargion (Pune, founded 2021) was started by Vilas Shelke and Manjusha Shelke, the latter a chief scientist at CSIR's National Chemical Laboratory. The company has patented hard carbon as an anode material and also uses a polymer anode. It built what it says is India's first dedicated sodium-ion cell fabrication pilot plant, and in 2023 projected cell costs of Rs 11–12 per watt-hour with a battery life of 12–15 years. Rechargion is setting up a facility to produce 500 cells a day, though the report does not clarify whether this line is currently operational.

In August 2025, the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) completed a two-month evaluation of Rechargion's cells, which the company says achieved IEC 62660 compliance for sodium-ion batteries—a first in India, according to Rechargion. The startup has drawn backing from the Ministry of Heavy Industries via the ARAI-AMTIF accelerator, UNIDO, the US-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund, Social Alpha, and the Venture Center at NCL.

Indi Energy (Roorkee, founded 2019) was co-founded by Akash Soni (CEO), Yogesh Kumar Sharma, Asit Sahoo and Nagesh Kumar—all IIT Roorkee alumni. Its distinguishing feature is BioBlack, a branded hard carbon anode material derived from farm-waste biomass, the kind north Indian farmers typically burn each October to clear fields. Indi Energy produces its own hard carbon, cathode material, and electrolyte in-house, combining them into pouch cells that reach 90–95% energy efficiency with cycle life above 2,000 cycles. The company won the National Startup Award 2022 in the energy storage category and DRDO's Dare to Dream 3.0 challenge, and currently runs a pilot production plant while describing plans to move toward mass production. Company databases put its funding at roughly $1.59 million across three rounds; a separate Inc42 record lists July 2021 as its last funding round, though the report does not clarify whether these two figures describe the same funding total.

Naxion Energy (founded 2024) is the newest entrant and moved fastest to market, launching what it calls India's first sodium-ion energy storage systems in December 2025 in three sizes—3.5 kW, 5 kW, and 10 kW—with expandable capacity. The company is targeting Indian homes and small businesses currently reliant on lead-acid inverter batteries or diesel generators. Naxion has raised Rs 25 crore so far and operates a Coimbatore plant with 1.5 GWh annual sodium-ion pack production capacity. It plans to invest Rs 200 crore in a pilot sodium-ion cell manufacturing plant (500 MWh capacity) by December 2026, alongside a 1 GWh battery pack assembly plant in Hyderabad, and expects a 50% increase in headcount as part of this expansion. G Satheesh Reddy, former DRDO chairman, spoke at the company's launch event about sodium-ion technology's implications for material constraints and energy security.

The bigger picture

All three companies are positioning sodium-ion cells as a potential replacement for lead-acid batteries in applications like e-rickshaws, inverters, and solar street lights—markets where cost and local material availability matter more than the energy density lithium-ion offers. The strategy leans on reducing dependence on imported lithium-ion inputs by using domestically sourced hard carbon and biomass, and each company has attracted some form of government or institutional backing (Ministry of Heavy Industries, DRDO, UNIDO, CSIR), suggesting policy interest in the sector is building.

What's missing from the picture

The report leaves several gaps. There are no current, post-2023 cost-per-watt-hour figures for Rechargion beyond its original projections, and it's unclear whether its 500-cells-a-day facility is running yet. Naxion hasn't disclosed pricing for its storage systems. None of the three companies have published sales, deployment, or customer adoption numbers, and there's no data comparing current sodium-ion costs to lithium-ion or lead-acid alternatives in the Indian market. It's also unclear how Rechargion's ARAI evaluation translates into a commercial certification or product launch timeline.

Risks to watch

All three companies remain at pilot-stage or planned-facility level, meaning manufacturing scale-up execution is largely untested. There's also a notable gap between disclosed funding and planned capital expenditure—Naxion's Rs 25 crore raised so far looks small next to its Rs 200 crore planned plant investment, and Indi Energy's roughly $1.59 million in total funding is modest relative to what mass production typically requires. Additionally, all three lean heavily on certifications and evaluations (IEC 62660, ARAI) as proof points, which suggests commercial validation—actual market traction—is still in early stages.

Why founders should care

For founders in energy storage or hardware more broadly, this sector offers a few probabilistic signals worth weighing. Government and institutional backing across all three companies may indicate growing policy appetite for domestically sourced battery materials, which could translate into grant or accelerator opportunities for adjacent startups. The use of locally available inputs—like farm waste converted into hard carbon—may point to a viable path for building supply chains less exposed to import dependency, though this remains unproven at scale. The repeated emphasis on certifications like IEC 62660 and ARAI evaluations suggests regulatory validation is likely to be a meaningful milestone gate for hardware startups in this space, not just a marketing checkbox.

At the same time, the visible gap between disclosed funding and planned capital expenditure across these three companies suggests that scaling sodium-ion manufacturing probably demands significantly more capital than typical seed or early-stage rounds provide—a consideration for founders modeling their own capital needs in battery hardware. Finally, the shared focus on lead-acid replacement use cases—e-rickshaws, inverters, solar lighting, home backup—may represent one of the more accessible near-term entry points for founders building battery hardware businesses, given the lower performance bar compared to premium lithium-ion applications.

Sources differ on Indi Energy's exact funding history: one figure (~$1.59 million) is attributed to unspecified company databases, while a separate data point (last round dated July 2021) comes from Inc42, and it's not clear whether these reconcile to the same total.