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Meine Electric raises $750K to power APAC’s First Iron-Air Battery

Meine Electric has announced raising $750,000 (~₹6.7 crore) pre-seed capital from marquee investors like Antler, Rebalance, Venture Catalysts, grad Capital and AIC-AU Incubation Foundation (the incubator hosted by Anna University) and reputed angel investors, including industry veteran Alexander Hogeveen Rutter- showcasing industry and academia’s strong conviction in the technology. The pre-seed capital will help accelerate the company’s transition from laboratory-scale prototypes to pilot-ready iron-air battery systems.

Founded in 2023 by Priyansh Mohan (metal-air technologist; Anna University graduate) and Stuti Kakkar (former BCG consultant; economist), Meine Electric has successfully demonstrated its proprietary iron-air battery technology to be a long-duration battery capable of working at less than $0.05/kWh (~₹4/kWh) levelised cost of storage. Iron-air batteries are built from abundant raw materials including iron, air, and water, and work on a reversible rusting process: during discharge, iron reacts with oxygen to form rust and release electricity; during charging, the reaction reverses to regenerate metallic iron. Unlike global peers, MEINE Electric has developed the technology capable of faster charge & discharge to enable integration with solar-heavy grids.

While lithium-ion batteries can store power for only a few hours before becoming financially infeasible, Meine Electric’s iron-air battery technology has been developed as a 16-24 hour battery solution capable of getting fully charged within 8 hours, matching the typical solar surplus window, making them a critical energy infrastructure that ensures Round-the-Clock (RTC) renewable energy coverage for current and future energy grids.

Meine Electric stands as the only player across APAC with a proven iron-air technology stack, achieving 4 patents granted, 7 international patents filed, and more in the pipeline, with chemistry performance proven against global benchmarks.

Priyansh Mohan, Co-Founder and CEO, Meine Electric, commenting on the company’s roadmap “India will win the energy transition when clean power becomes dispatchable, not intermittent. Our focus for the last three years has been to make iron-air chemistry stable and repeatable. Now we are proving it for the grid and C&I power requirements, building the evidence that iron-air storage can become a backbone asset for the world’s renewable-first future.”

Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, Third Derivative, said, “Lithium-ion has shown its capability in peaking and integrating renewables over short duration. However, as renewable penetration rises above 50%, long duration energy storage is required to fully replicate the grid and system benefits of conventional generation. Having seen dozens of LDES technologies, Meine Electric is one of the strongest I have seen globally. Solutions like Meine Electric’s are already required for off-grid and replacing diesel gensets and will increasingly be required at the grid scale as renewable penetration continues to increase.”

Gowri Shankar Nagarajan, Associate Partner at Antler, said, “What impressed us about Meine Electric is the depth of their electrochemical research paired with system-level execution - a team that has spent years turning a hard science problem into a repeatable, grid-ready solution. At Antler, we back founders building foundational infrastructure for the future, and we believe Meine can become a globally relevant platform for renewable-first power systems.”

Aishwarya Malhi and Vikas Kumar, Co-founders at Rebalance, said, “When we think about energy, generation usually takes centre stage – but true energy security demands storage. We’re all well aware how rapidly the world order is shifting and energy will become the single most powerful asset for any economy in the future. Thrilled to be part of Meine’s journey as they become critical enablers of renewable-heavy power grids.”

Meine Electric operates from a 5,000 sq ft facility in Chennai that is actively being outfitted for pilot production, enabling the transition from lab prototypes to pilot-ready systems. The founding team brings 75+ years of combined experience and has spent the last three years refining the core iron-air chemistry, emerging from stealth with a stable, repeatable chemistry platform ready for scale-up and field validation.

Looking ahead, the funds raised from this round will be utilised to accelerate Meine Electric’s technology scale-up and commercialisation roadmap. The company is building a multi-kW grid connected prototype, followed by larger pilot units, as part of its plan to deliver turnkey, containerised iron-air battery systems by 2027. A portion of the capital will also be directed towards strengthening the team and research infrastructure and deepening partnerships with Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Energy Intensive C&I customers for pilot adoption.