Adiabatic Technologies raises Rs 8.3 crore to power robots and drones
The Ahilyanagar and Pune based deeptech company will expand manufacturing to 100 MWh a year, betting that in-house battery design and BMS engineering, not pack assembly, is where the value sits in India's battery market.
Deeptech energy company Adiabatic Technologies has raised Rs 8.3 crore in a seed funding round to scale up its lithium-ion battery systems for robotics, drones, defence equipment and industrial machinery. The round was led by Malpani Ventures and Avinya Ventures, with participation from Appreciate Capital, DeVC, San Francisco-based Operators Studio and the UPES Incubator.
Founded in 2022 by IIT Hyderabad alumnus Darshan Meher, the Ahilyanagar and Pune based company designs custom battery packs, smart chargers and a proprietary battery management system, or BMS, for original equipment manufacturers operating in sectors where a failure in the field is expensive. The company says it has deployed more than 20,000 battery systems with over 25 OEMs across robotics, defence, drones, agri-equipment, electric vehicles and solar energy.
Where the fresh capital goes
The money will be used to take manufacturing capacity to 100 MWh a year, speed up product development, add to the engineering team, and widen deployment across robotics, defence, drones, electric mobility, marine, agri-equipment and industrial energy storage. The company is also building specialised platforms for autonomous mobile robots, industrial automation and unmanned aerial systems.
"This funding allows us to accelerate what we've been building over the last few years: high-performance battery systems designed and engineered in India," said Darshan Meher, Founder and CEO, Adiabatic Technologies. "Our focus remains the same: solving difficult engineering problems for customers operating in demanding environments."
Why investors are backing design over assembly
Unlike conventional pack assemblers, Adiabatic designs its systems in-house, from cell selection and pack architecture through to thermal management and its own BMS. Its products are built for applications that need high discharge performance, rapid charging and strong thermal safety.
"We believe that the real value in battery manufacturing lies in engineering: designing systems that perform reliably under demanding operating conditions," said Dhruv Sane, Principal at Malpani Ventures, adding that companies with differentiated technology rather than commoditised assembly will create lasting value. Gaurav VK Singhvi, Managing Partner at Avinya Ventures, said the team is "able to rethink each component of battery hardware or software and rework it to solve for the customers."
Abhishek Agarwal, General Partner at Appreciate Capital, tied it to a broader shift. "Physical AI is unlocking real adoption across robotics, drones, defence and agri-equipment. A underlying problem statement common across the board is the battery system underneath."
That gap is structural. India still imports the bulk of its lithium-ion cells while assembling a large share of packs domestically, which has pushed the competitive question away from cells and towards pack engineering. Estimates of market size vary by research house, with IMARC Group valuing the India lithium-ion battery market at $3.59 billion in 2025 and projecting $9.79 billion by 2034.
What a battery management system actually does
A lithium-ion pack is not one battery but dozens or hundreds of cells wired together. Left alone, they drift, with some cells charging faster, some running hotter, some ageing quicker. Over time that mismatch degrades the pack and, in the worst case, causes a thermal runaway.
The BMS is the electronics and software layer that prevents this. It tracks voltage, current and temperature cell by cell, balances charge between them, cuts power when limits are breached, and reports state of health back to the operator.
For a two-wheeler, an ordinary BMS is adequate. For a drone that must not drop out of the sky, or a defence system operating in a desert, the BMS is the product. That is why companies designing their own are valued differently from those sourcing them off the shelf.
The near-term test for Adiabatic will be whether it can hold reliability standards while pushing to 100 MWh, and whether India's robotics and drone OEMs scale fast enough to absorb that capacity.