e-TRNL Energy is redesigning the battery cell itself rather than its chemistry
The Bengaluru-based company has developed a cell architecture it says works with lithium and sodium chemistries alike and builds the machinery to manufacture it.
Almost all battery innovation happens inside the cell, not to it. Researchers keep changing the cathode, the electrolyte, the anode. But the physical design, how the layers are wound, stacked and packaged, has stayed roughly the same for decades.
That design shapes a lot more than people realise. How the cell sheds heat, how fast it can safely charge, how much of its volume is usable versus packaging, and how cheaply it can be made- much of this tends to follow from the architecture, not just the chemistry.
has been working on the design. Founded in 2021 by Apoorv Shaligram and Uttam Kumar Sen, the company says it rebuilt the cell architecture and manufacturing process from scratch, instead of making small improvements to the existing design.
A design that does not care about chemistry
The central claim is that the architecture is chemistry-agnostic. The company says it works with current lithium-ion chemistries and with the sodium-ion chemistries that are expected to follow. The benefits it claims from the redesign are lower heat generation, faster charging, longer cycle life, higher energy density and better manufacturing economics. It has been granted two patents on the cell design and has filed further applications.
It describes a full-stack approach covering cell design, manufacturing technology and machinery development, with all production equipment engineered in-house from concept to full automation. A new cell design cannot be made on machines built for the old one. So a company attempting this has to build its own manufacturing equipment too, not just design the cell.
Rs 27.4 crore, and a pilot line to build
e-TRNL Energy raised Rs 27.4 crore, about $3 million, in a seed round announced in February 2026 and led by IAN Group through its IAN Alpha Fund. Navam Capital and Anicut Capital participated alongside existing investors Speciale Invest, Micelio Mobility and IIMA Ventures, and Ather Energy's co-founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain came in as angel investors.
The founder frames the round as a turning point rather than a beginning. Shaligram has said the past three years went into creating the design and building the machines and processes to realise it, and that the funding moves the company towards demonstration, testing and scaling.
His lead investor put it in similar terms. IAN Alpha Fund's managing partner said what stood out was a first-principles rethink of cell architecture and manufacturing rather than incremental upgrades to legacy designs, and that India's energy transition depends on owning cell design rather than only adopting batteries.
That followed about Rs 7.5 crore raised in 2022 from Speciale Invest, Micelio Mobility and CIIE. The new money is for completing product development, validating performance and safety, and demonstrating that the cells can be manufactured in India at scale.
It has a 20,000-square-foot research and early manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, and has said it plans a 250 megawatt-hour pilot manufacturing plant by 2027, with the intention of expanding that to 2 gigawatt hours later.
Nothing has been independently validated. No customer, order or revenue figure is public; no third-party test result has been released, and the company's own account is that it is now moving into the demonstration phase after three years of development.
(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)