chennai nikhilesh mishra and puneet jain met at iit roorkee nearly 17 years ago and spent their free time recharging their batteries by discussing startup ideas a mechanical engineering student mishra was interested in automotives and in his final year delivered a couple of lectures on electric vehicles batteries and electric drivetrainsfor mishra and jain cofounders of lithiumion battery startup grinntech this was when their startup journey began it occurred to me that by the time we mature in our career internal combustion ic engines will begin to make way for electric ones remembers mishra i discussed this idea with puneet and we decided to start our company in the ev domain since batteries are the costliest part of an ev it was a fast decision to focus on lithiumion batteries but it took nine more years for final incubation under iit madras in 2017 their meeting with iit madras professor and ev evangelist ashok jhunjhunwala turned the tide for mishra and jain iit madras incubation has been one of the most important building blocks for growing grinntech says mishrafive years on grinntech has come a long way it first raised 2 million or rs 15 crore from auto and tech industry veterans including v sumantran former vc ashok leyland and lakshmi narayanan cofounder cognizant in june 2021 it raised another 2 million in bridge funding round and is currently in the process of raising its seriesa investmentthe company has also signed an mou with the tamil nadu government to invest rs 100 crore in a new factory over the next five years significant amount of investment will be made in the battery facility upon closure of seriesa investment says mishracurrently grinntech makes batteries for three applications and is set to make them for tractors too this will require a much bigger and complex battery system which will be used in indian as well as international markets says mishraas ev demand picks up grinntech is expanding operations rapidly our facility is running at full utilization and we had to expand production capacities faster than anticipated because of strong demand says mishra grinntech has more than 120 people working for it but the number is increasing by the day as it scales upbacked by legacy giants like sumantran and narayanan the grinntech team is convinced its time is now the team points out that tesla is valued more than most other car companies combined and that there are nine electric car companies in the top 20 list right now in terms of market value most people understand that this is the right time to enter this business and make it big says mishra we have employees who share our vision and investors who back our decisions even though its early stages yet india will play a lead role in this ev paradigm shift on a global scale and grinntech will have its footprint in that he says its a big dream but its just about starting to become a reality