Bengaluru-based recycling firm Metastable Materials, which specialises in lithium-ion batteries, has secured seed funding led by Sequoia India’s Surge, Speciale Invest and Theia Ventures, and other angel investors.

The angel investors are Akshay Singhal, Co-founder and CEO Log9, Kartik Hajela, Co founder and COO, Log9, Archana Priyadershini, Co-founder of Slash Capital and Sanjeev Rangrass, Venture Partner of Unitus Ventures.

The new funding will be channelled into recruitment to support Metastable’s manufacturing and industrial engineering functions, as well as for managing its
supply chain and day-to-day operations.

Millions of vehicles around the world are equipped with or directly powered by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, and demand continues to rise rapidly every day. The industry for Li-ion battery recycling, which is today valued at US$4.6 billion, is thus expected to grow at least five times by 2030, as corporations search for a proper way to handle end-of-life Li-ion batteries.

Furthermore, many nations – including the EU – plan to introduce regulations to ensure that batteries can be repurposed or recycled at the end of their life.

current recycling methods to extract and reuse metals from end-of-life Li-ion batteries are plagued by a myriad of challenges. This includes logistical challenges of transporting large Li-ion batteries to recycling facilities, which can be costly due to Lithium’s highly flammable nature and strict regulations around packaging.

Efficient metal extraction is also a complicated process that involves disassembly, separation and recovery, and requires significant investments into facilities and engineering, which has been difficult for companies to carry out profitably at scale.

Keeping these issues in mind, Metastable calims to have developed the world’s first, chemical-free Integrated Carbothermal Reduction process for recycling and extracting valuable materials, such as copper, aluminium, cobalt, nickel and lithium from Li-ion batteries.

The technology used significantly reduces capital and operational expenditure in comparison to the conventional battery recycling practices, along with a recovery rate of over 90 percent.

Metastable is also developing storage and packaging solutions to safely move used batteries from consumers to recycling facilities. Current methods in India often do not conform to the highest international standards for storage and transportation, and packaging is primarily made with flammable, unregulated materials. Metastable’s packaging, in contrast, is designed to mitigate fire risks using a multi-layered heat resistant structure, allowing batteries to be transported in bulk safely.

"Battery materials are both scarce and expensive, which makes re-mining critical metals from batteries a business necessity. Metastable Materials builds on its founders' domain and proprietary approach to re-mining batteries that are chemical-free and capital efficient, as a result of low capital and operating expenditure with industry-class yields."

He further added that they strongly believed that re-mining metals from batteries was the path to solving for self-sufficiency of rare metals for India. 

"The business is excellently positioned to cater to the rapidly growing demand for these recycled materials into batteries for electric vehicles, which forms an important part of the climate tech, decarbonisation and circular economy agenda for India and globally," said Priya Shah, General Partner, Theia Ventures.