India’s Offgrid raises $15M to make lithium optional for battery storage
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 seven-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…
