Inventions, Innovations – Page 4

NATIONAL: ENGINEERING & SCIENCE: DRONES: India closer to New Drone Power as NRT’s Indigenous Solar-Powered Pseudo-Satellite Flies for over 21 hrs

Start-up announced that its prototype had completed flight during Winter Solstice trial. Big fillip to India’s plan of having long-endurance drone capable of flying in stratosphere.

Bengaluru-based NewSpace Research and Technologies Pvt Ltd (NRT) announced Saturday that its long-endurance drone, the solar-powered High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS), had carried out its first flight lasting over 21 hours. The development comes as a big fillip to India’s plan to have its own long-endurance drones capable of flying in the stratosphere.

The project is being spearheaded under the Innovation for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative of the defence ministry. Under this, NRT has signed a contract for an initial proof-of-concept demonstrator, which targets a solar-powered flight lasting longer than 48 hours.

Sameer Joshi, CEO of the start-up and a former Air Force pilot, announced on X, formerly Twitter, that the company’s prototype completed its flight during a Winter Solstice trial on 22 December.

The Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, tests the solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV) endurance at its worst. The next flight will take place on 21 June or the Summer Solstice, when the Sun will be at its brightest.

The IAF has included HAPS under a Rs 1,000 crore ‘Make I project’ of the Government of India. This means that 70 percent of the funding will come from the government.

Upbeat about the NRT feat, defence sources told ThePrint that this was the next big thing in air warfare and that the flight included both day and night flying, with the UAV using solar energy for travel during the day and using its solar-charged battery for flying at night. The sources refused to get into details of what altitude the UAV flew at, but said the plan is to have it fly in the stratosphere at about 65,000 feet, above air traffic.

For context, commercial aircraft typically fly between 31,000 and 38,000 feet, or at about 5.9 to 7.2 miles.

Since the HAPS operates on solar power, it can continue to fly for months.

India’s first stratospheric vehicle?

The HAPS UAV is part of a new genre of solar-powered platforms being designed across the world for persistent surveillance, communications, and specialist science missions.

Both the IAF and the Navy are on board with the project and are looking at acquiring this capability in the short term as well as in the long term.

In India, the National Aerospace Laboratories under the government’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is also working on a similar project, but details of its progress are yet unknown.

Defence sources told ThePrint that India does not have a stratospheric vehicle.

Running exclusively on solar power and flying above the weather at 16-20 km autonomously for months at a stretch, a HAPS platform will fill a capability gap between satellites and HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) UAVs, sources said.

The sources explained that HAPS is ultra-lightweight but has a strong body with the ability to take onboard batteries and other systems. They said that as the battery technology improves, the endurance would also grow.

The intended surveillance payloads for HAPS include electro-optical/ infra-red (EO/IR) solutions, synthetic aperture radars (SAR) besides communication payloads — including range extenders, electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic warfare (EW).

The existing technology limits of the ISR payloads for HAPS allow observations of up to 80-100 km from stratospheric altitudes, which is 2-3 times more as offered by MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) UAVs. ISR, or Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), is vital for military operations.

Sources said the HAPS technology will offset the lack of critical ISR gap felt during the Doklam crisis, the Balakot incident, and the ongoing crisis in Ladakh.

The Navy will be an immediate beneficiary since this allows continuous low-cost manning of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), sources said.

They also explained that the civilian use of HAPS is equally important since it can provide telecommunication connectivity all over India — especially in regions with patchy terrestrial network issues because of the challenges of terrain and costs.

source/content: theprint.in (headline edited)

NATIONAL / KARNATAKA: ELECTRONICS & AVIATION: HAL to host Avionics Expo in Delhi on December 7, 8

The expo will unveil a comprehensive range of avionics products deployed in various aircraft platforms, including advanced flight control systems, communication systems and navigation systems.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will showcase its rich legacy in the design, development and production of a diverse range of avionics systems during Avionics Expo-2023, to be held at Dr Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi, on December 7 and 8.

The Expo will be inaugurated by Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan.

“We will demonstrate HAL’s capabilities and contributions toward self-reliance in avionics, to our stakeholders, including the Indian Armed Forces, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Civil Aviation, DRDO and other important institutions,” said CB Ananthakrishnan, CMD (Additional Charge), HAL.

The expo will unveil a comprehensive range of avionics products deployed in various aircraft platforms, including advanced flight control systems, communication systems and navigation systems. Several panel discussions will feature experts from the Armed Forces, HAL, partner organisations, and academia, providing a holistic view of the sector.

“The event will serve as a hub for professionals, industry leaders and stakeholders from the aviation sector. They will have ample networking opportunities to establish meaningful connections, foster collaborations and explore potential business partnerships. It is a testament to HAL’s commitment to advancing aerospace technology in India,” said DK Sunil, Director (Engineering and R&D).

A section for live demonstrations will allow visitors to witness the performance and reliability of HAL’s avionics solutions in realtime scenarios. Engineering students from in and around Delhi have also been invited to gain the experience. HAL’s Avionics Expo aims to achieve self-reliance in avionics and is a testament to its commitment to advancing aerospace technology in India.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL/ NATIONAL/ KARNATAKA: Bengaluru Scientist Prof Urbasi Singh, 1st Indian Scientist to get Canadian Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Award, Wins USD 8 million grant

Prof Urbasi specialises in quantum science and her research interests span cutting-edge topical areas such as quantum communication, quantum computation, quantum optics and quantum fundamentals.

Prof Urbasi Singh from the Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) laboratory at the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bengaluru, is the first Indian scientist to be awarded Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Photonic Quantum Science and Technologies.

She won a grant worth $8 million, opening possibilities for international interactions in academia, industry and other sectors developing lab-to-market innovative models — for building a future ecosystem based on quantum technologies.

Prof Urbasi specialises in quantum science and her research interests span cutting-edge topical areas such as quantum communication, quantum computation, quantum optics and quantum fundamentals and information processing.

Her lab is one of the first in India to manufacture and establish the usage of heralded and entangled photon sources towards various applications in quantum technologies.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL: INVESTMENTS IN MEDICAL & HEALTH SERVICES: Philips Launches Innovation Campus in Bengaluru; gen AI provides more Opportunities, says CEO

The company has over 9,000 employees in India, and of these 5,000 employees in Bengaluru will be working on innovative health technologies. The company employs over 70,700 employees globally.

Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) provides a lot of opportunities, and it is the next wave of new technology that can help solve the problems of customers, said Roy Jakobs, CEO of Royal Philips.

The company launched its new innovation campus in Bengaluru that can accommodate 5,000 employees. Speaking on the sidelines of the launch in the city on Thursday, Jakobs said if you look at healthcare, our customers are asking how we can serve more patients.

“So, we are looking at how technology can help them process more patients,” he said, explaining the significant role that AI plays in innovation.

The company has over 9,000 employees in India, and of these 5,000 employees in Bengaluru will be working on innovative health technologies. The company employs over 70,700 employees globally.

It also has a Healthcare Innovation Centre in Pune, Global Business Services in Chennai, and commercial teams in Gurugram.

For the Netherlands-headquartered Philips, India plays a significant role and it is a major hub for innovation.

“Philips has been innovating for more than 130 years and started doing business in India some 92 years ago. In the last 27 years, the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru has grown to represent almost all our business categories and supporting roles,” the CEO said.

“In India, we not only want to speed up access to care but also locally develop and contribute to solutions for the rest of the world,” he added.

Last year, with an investment of Rs 400 crore under the PLI scheme, the company’s healthcare innovation centre in Chakan, Pune, started manufacturing radio frequency coils for MRI machines. The company also plans expansions in Pune. It spends yearly over $1.7 billion on innovation, of which 50% goes into software development. Philips also sees growth opportunities in the beauty and grooming verticals of its business in India.

The company’s group sales increased 11% to euro 4.5 billion for the third quarter of this year, and it also raised its full-year guidance to 6-7% comparable sales growth and an Adjusted EBITA margin of 10-11%.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL / KARNATAKA: BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE: How a Space for Biological Sciences shaped up in Bengaluru

An event at National Centre for Biological Sciences traced the premier institute’s genesis and growth over the last two and a half decades.

U.B. Poornima, the first resident architect of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), remembers what the campus was like in 1994 when she first landed there.

“The compound wall construction was already done, and a sump was being laid,” she recalls. But the land, back then, was barren, a far cry from today’s bustling, verdant campus. “Only snakes were seen crawling around,” she says at “Building (for) Biology: The NCBS Campus”, an event that consisted of a historical campus walk, followed by a talk that delved into the genesis of the institute and its campus.

Nostalgia and memory, often tinctured with humour, repeatedly made their way into this event, part of a public lecture series regularly held by the Archives at NCBS that sought to “understand the environment built for doing science, how space shapes the culture of science, and how science, too, is shaped by the space it inhabits,” as the event’s invitation put it, adding that the campus walkthrough is an experiment in seeing the space as a historical site.

Insights and changes

Peppered with insights from these campus members and enlivened by questions from curious audience members, the walk ended up becoming a freewheeling discussion on various aspects of the campus, ranging from the rationale behind the lovely view of the lawns at the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines to how the pond on campus became one, about the first set of buildings designed by the Delhi-based architect Raj Rewal and the curious case of how the Godrej locks in campus housing could once be opened with a single key (a mistake that was rectified).

“A lot of changes have happened since we moved into the campus … people grew, space grew, a lot more occupants in the building,” says Poornima, while T.M. Sahadevan, who served as the first administrative officer at NCBS, lingers on the somewhat serendipitous origins of the campus.

“There were a lot of problems,” he says, recalling how when the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) first approached the government of Karnataka, wanting to set up NCBS in Bengaluru, they were told that no more expansion in Bengaluru was possible since Hosur was already putting a load on Bangalore back then.

“Then someone suggested that we ask GKVK,” he says, adding that this came through. “We got 20 acres of land and took over in February,” remembers Sahadevan, the first TIFR person to set foot on campus back in 1991.

Admittedly, the event was somewhat unstructured, unearthing the memories and lived experiences of some of its past and present campus members rather than a linear building biography. Still, it succeeded in leaving attendees more enlightened (and often amused) by the end.

A 25-year-old history

According to the NCBS website, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) has been directly or indirectly responsible for forming at least six research institutions in the country, of which NCBS is one.

While the initial proposal made in 1982, following a suggestion made by Prof. S. Ramaseshan, the then Director of the Indian Institute of Science, was to have a joint TIFR-IISc Centre on the IISc campus, this did not reach fruition. Then, in 1984, the Planning Commission agreed to fund a centre for fundamental research in biological sciences at Bangalore, functioning as “an autonomous unit under the aegis of TIFR and conduct fundamental research and teaching in areas of biology at the frontiers of knowledge,” as the website notes. The next few years were spent scouting for an appropriate place to set up, culminating in this 20-odd-acre campus leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences, with an MOU signed in 1991.

While NCBS technically celebrated its 25^th anniversary in October 2016 since it spent its first few years at the TIFR Centre at the Indian Institute of Science Campus before moving to its current location, people began trickling in by 1998 or so.

“Depending on who you speak to, people have been living in this space for around 25 years,” says Venkat Srinivasan, who heads the Archives at NCBS, at the talk that followed the campus walk. Though he agrees it is only a rough estimate, he adds, “It is a good moment to reflect on the physical space that you inhabit daily.”

Extraordinarily particular

In this talk, augmented by audio interviews, old photographs, documents and interjections by the faculty members who were also part of the audience, Srinivasan traced the institute’s genesis and growth over the last two and a half decades. From an audio clip of an interview with Obaid Siddiqi, the co-founder and first director of NCBS, that reflects on the idea of NCBS to documents detailing the nitty-gritty aspects of lease and construction and old photographs reflecting the barrenness of the land before the institute came into being, the talk’s biggest takeaway was this. “How extraordinarily particular this group of individuals were at getting what they wanted,” he puts it.

Poornima, who was deeply entrenched in the construction process right from the start, is wont to agree. In most government institutions, she points out, the final users of the buildings, too busy with their research, give the architects instructions in one go, which goes on to be developed by the latter. In this case, however, the users were deeply involved in the process from the start to the finish. “They took away time from research and were involved at every stage,” she remembers. “They knew what they wanted.”

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

KARNATAKA: POWER & ENERGY / GREEN : How Bengaluru start-ups Biome, Boson Whitewater, Tankerwala & Bluecred turn Wastewater into a Resource

Experts and start-ups alike are working on new dynamics of water management and distribution in a mission to save groundwater and leave enough for lakes and water bodies to be recharged .

Welcome to the new sustainable world where one man’s waste is another’s resource. And welcome to Bengaluru where all kinds of experiments in urban water are taking place. Focus first on S Vishwanath of Biome, the man who followed rules, collected rainwater and rooftop runoffs, stored it in tanks and reused it. Then the grey water was recycled and used for horticulture and growing vegetables on rooftops. Then he met with a number of residents’ bodies and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to foster partnerships which would revive not just lakes but wells and any aquifers which would save the water in the city. Today he teaches a water management course at Shiv Nadar University and is also a consultant to the BBMP.

Sewage treatment plants (STPs) are mandatory in the city for multi-storey apartment living. Today many are able to release their treated water into bio-remediation segments of the lakes where water islands and select plants clean the quality of water such that it can be released into the lake. Periodic checks are done to ensure that water quality in the lakes is of the required standards. As a result, about 100 of the 210-odd surviving lakes are in a state of reasonably good health, says Vishwanath.

Income from Wastewater

But managing lakes is a resource-intensive job and it needs more money. Here arrived the entrepreneurs who created start-ups which would address various parts of the water chain. Consider for instance Vikas Brahmavar of Boson Whitewater who works with RWAs of housing societies helping manage the excess water that comes out of the treatment. Brahmavar treats it to the right quality and sells it to bulk users such as developers and other bulk users in Bengaluru who need large quantities of clean water for construction .

Now take the case of Shravanth Donthi, co-founder and CEO of Tankerwala. Former owner of an airline in South Africa, he sold his stock and came to India to work in the water and sustainability space. When his wife and he saw tankers delivering water every other day, they built tankerwala, an app to aggregate all the water tankers on an app, during COVID. Borewells were tested and reports of the water being supplied by the tankers were issued. When real estate companies started buying 2-3 lakh litres of water a day, a quest for other sources of water started, so that groundwater could be protected. STPs in the city were generating water. Tankerwala started picking up this water and delivering it to construction companies and metro sites at Shivaji Nagar and Cantonment to contractor Afcons. They used this water for tunnel boring. For every metre, it uses 70,000-1 lakh litres of water, and for the metro network, they needed to dig tunnels of 40-50 km in the city. The first mission of using treated water was met.

For concrete applications, the water was cleaned up and met IS 456-2000 standards. Tankerwala identified the STP, deployed vehicles and supplied water. Monthly testing became the norm for RCC projects. This accounted for 3-5 lakh litres from 6-7 STPs. The challenge now was that the STP network of the city was not mapped, and water had to be supplied in a 5 km radius to remain carbon neutral on different sites.

This led to a new app called Bluecred which allowed suppliers and users to register and sell or seek water. The system matches the STP, buys water from the generators and provides the residents with enough money to manage the STP. They use 30 per cent of the water for flushing and horticulture. This dynamic grid has been very successful in those pockets where there are occupied projects and a lot of new construction taking place.

Water for the Lakes

But Dhonti and Brahmavar’s solutions became Vishwanath’s problem. Will lakes get enough water if commercial users corner the cleaned water? There was even a power plant that helped water management if a certain quantity went to them. Now an arrangement has been made to ensure the lake gets its supply and the rest is sold to the power plant.

Ultimately, the network will only grow if the sewage is treated as a resource and noat as waste. For the RWAs, it is important to find the right start-ups that would pay them the operating cost to source the excess water. For start-ups, there needs to be a documented network of STPs that they can source water from. City managers simply need to map the STPs. For the suppliers, the water volumes have to be planned area-wise so that demand can be matched to local supply to reduce carbon footprint. The lake warriors need their regular supplies to keep the lakes up and running with vibrant fish and bird populations.

Ultimately, as Vishwanath says, the plethora of organisations need to synchronise to achieve the final goal — to unlock the value of wastewater and purify it to the requirements of different user groups. As lakes recharge the water aquifers, the depletion of underground water can also be contained. This can only be a win-win situation.

source/content: moneycontrol.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL / KARNATAKA: BUSINESS / FINANCE : Kannadiga Nikhil Kamath becomes Youngest Billionaire of India at 37

The company which Nikhil Kamath and Nitin Kamath have built has booked a profit of more than Rs 2000 crore.

Kamath is originally from Karnataka. They started Zerodha, a fintech company in 2010. They needed funds to build the company. However, with their talent and hard work they made up for the lack of education.

Nikhil Kamath was topper in the Hurun India Rich List of 2022. His net profit was Rs 17,500 crore at that time. He became a billionaire when he was just 34 in 2021.

Nikhil did not like to go to school when he was young. He dropped out of school as he was not allowed to take 10th grade board exams.

At the age of 17, Nikhil joined a call centre for just Rs 8,000 salary. But he began to deal in shares at the age of 18. This was a major turning point in his life.

In 2010, Nikhil along with his brother Nitin founded Zerodha, a company, which gave support, cost and technical support to businessmen and investors. They also founded a Hedge fund called True Bekan.

The company made a profit of Rs 2094 crore. The company does not have any employees that are qualified from IIT or IIM. It has one crore users.

Now Nitin and Nikhil have a salary package of Rs 100 crore each. Nikil is ranked 40th in the list of richest people of India. According to Forbes, the net value of Kamath brothers is USD 5.5 billion at present.

source/content: daijiworld.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL / NATIONAL / KARNATAKA: TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OF MEDICAL RESEARCH: Sepsis Treatment SUR-101 Developed by Researchers in Bengaluru and Bhubaneswar licensed to Dutch Biotech firm SurvivX

The development of the treatment was announced by C-CAMP director Dr Taslimarif Saiyed at an event with Netherlands PM Mark Rutte last month.

A novel sepsis treatment, called SUR-101, developed collaboratively by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), Bengaluru, and the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, was licensed to Dutch biotech firm SurvivX in the presence of Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Thursday.

The development of the technology, presently at the preclinical stage, was announced by Dr Taslimarif Saiyed, director-CEO of C-CAMP, at an event with Rutte on the latter’s visit to Bengaluru on the sidelines of the G20 summit last month.

Sepsis is a life-threatening medical emergency. It happens when an infection that a patient already has triggers a chain reaction throughout the body. According to C-CAMP, existing interventions for sepsis are found to be effective only at the very early onset of sepsis. By modulating the immune response, the current technology allows a longer time window for administering targeted interventions for sepsis.

“Sepsis is a worldwide challenge, with approximately 50 million cases and 11 million sepsis-related deaths worldwide, accounting for 20 per cent of all global deaths. The new compound, called SUR-101, is an immune-stimulating therapeutic in sepsis patients with signs of immune suppression. It could be the first step towards personalization and precision in sepsis medicine that has thus far been treated as a drug discovery problem. The technology presently at the preclinical stage is a discovery by a team of scientists led by Prof Ravindran Balachandran from ILS. It has been translated and co-developed by the translational research group of Dr Saiyed at C-CAMP,” said a media release from the Bengaluru centre, which is an initiative of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science, Technology and Earth Sciences.

Speaking on the licensing effort, the Dutch ambassador to India, Marisa Gerards, said, “Life sciences & health remains a priority sector for the bilateral cooperation between the Netherlands and India. We have successfully been working in this field for many years, and this new partnership is a great example of what India and the Netherlands can do together. Sepsis is an important global societal challenge, and it is in need of innovative solutions.”

“This is one of the first global technology transfers by C-CAMP of an academic invention developed exclusively in India. We are excited about the partnership with SurvivX, a biotech company in the Netherlands, in the antimicrobial resistance domain. This agreement will be a model in innovation-focused bilateral partnerships that addresses global issues together,” Dr Saiyed said.

SurvivX CEO Remko van Leeuwen said, “Our technology is based on a specific protein excreted by a tropical parasite: the filarial roundworm. The team in India made the remarkable observation that people infected by this parasite typically do not end up at an ICU unit when they develop sepsis. They started studies to find the cause of this protective effect that an infection with this worm seems to have.”

According to Leeuwen, the researchers discovered that a specific protein secreted by the worm was responsible for the effect. “We have already shown that the protein leads to a much better survival of mice with sepsis, confirming the protective effect seen in filaria patients. But mice are not human, Thus, SurvivX needs to show the safety and activity of the protein in humans before it can be tested as a novel therapeutic approach,” he added.

source/content: indianexpress.com (headline edited)

KARNATAKA: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH / NANOENZYMES: Scientists of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Develop Enzyme Mimetic with potential applications in Wastewater Treatment, Healthcare

The nanozyme can degrade pollutants in wastewater by oxidising them in the presence of sunlight, thereby reducing the toxicity of wastewater.

Scientists at the Materials Research Centre (MRC), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have developed a new type of enzyme mimetic that can degrade toxic chemicals in industrial wastewater effectively in the presence of sunlight.

Enzymes are proteins that catalyse a majority of biological reactions in living systems. However, the practical use of natural enzymes is hindered by inherent limitations such as sensitivity to denaturation (breakdown/damage), complex production procedures, high costs, and difficulties in recycling, says Subinoy Rana, Assistant Professor at MRC and corresponding author of the paper published in Nanoscale.

Mass producing these enzymes is an expensive and time-consuming process. Another problem is storage – most of the natural enzymes are temperature-sensitive and require storage at cooler temperatures, often as low as -20°C.

Nano-sized enzyme mimetics or “nanozymes” manufactured in the lab can mimic such natural enzymes and overcome these practical challenges.

In the current study, the IISc team synthesised a platinum-containing nanozyme called NanoPtA, which can be converted into powder form for industrial use.

When the NanoPtA comes in contact with wastewater, the benzene rings and long alkyl chains present in the molecule form multiple non-covalent interactions. Individual NanoPtA molecules connect together to form tape-like structures that start emitting light, which is the origin of its oxidising capacity. The nanozyme can then degrade pollutants present in wastewater by oxidising them in the presence of sunlight, thereby reducing the toxicity of wastewater.

The team found that the nanozyme could degrade even small (micromolar) quantities of common effluents like phenols and dyes within ten minutes when placed under sunlight. The researchers also found that the NanoPtA complex was quite stable, lasting for up to 75 days at room temperature.

The team believes that the nanozyme can also have applications in healthcare and could be a potentially useful diagnostic tool for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

KARNATAKA : GREEN ENERGY: Bengaluru start-up offers a ‘ZEN’ Solution to Fire Risks and Low Life of EV Batteries

EMO Energy has developed a platform which combines software, hardware, cloud, and intelligence to improve safety and life of batteries which can be used across high energy and high-power applications.

The adoption of electric vehicles has been on the rise in India. As per data from the Ministry of Heavy Industries, more than 27 lakh electric vehicles have been registered in the country as of July 2023 with Karnataka seeing the third highest number of registrations.

However, incidents of electric vehicles and battery swapping stations catching fire have been a cause of concern to consumers and potential users.

“Over the last year, more than 200 vehicles caught fire in India, primarily due to overcharging and overheating or short circuits. Batteries are not designed to withstand the abuse, and in the scenario where a cell bursts, the whole vehicle catches fire due to improper mitigation,” says Mohammed Shoeb Ali, co-founder and managing partner at Transition VC, an energy transition-focused venture capital fund.

Bengaluru-based startup EMO Energy may have a solution for it. Founded by Sheetanshu Tyagi and Rahul Patel, EMO Energy has developed a platform that combines software, hardware, cloud, and intelligence to improve the safety and life of batteries. Called ZEN, the platform targets battery usage in high-energy and high-power applications from electric two wheelers to agriculture to mining and construction.

Safety and life

“We realised that all these applications have the same kind of issues. One is safety,” says Mr. Tyagi.

“You are operating in high temperature, and you want batteries that charge fast, pull more power and are smaller in size. And then there’s the concern of life. While vehicles have a life of seven to eight years, every two to three years you are losing a battery,” he adds.

The team put together their heads to understand how they could enhance the performance of batteries and solve the existing problems around it.

“Initially we thought we would build a software system and take it to different original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and battery companies who could use it to improve the life and safety of their batteries,” remembers Mr. Tyagi.

But then they realized the existing hardware in the country wasn’t strong enough for it. Most systems where Chinese derivatives that were basic and poor in technology.

“China spends time in developing batteries for small scooters. India just scaled that to big scooters,” Tyagi says.

According to Mr Ali from Transition VC who is also an investor at EMO Energy there is a massive demand-supply gap between the battery pack manufacturers and OEMs. He notes that the industry lacks companies that give warranties for the pack as many of them import them from China.

“Customers face range anxiety, battery degradation and warranty issues due to lack of quality battery packs, and this becomes even worse in temperatures greater than 40 degrees Celsius,” he says.

Intelligent battery system

The team understood that to ensure the performance safety and battery life at a cost people expected, they have to build everything around the battery system from scratch. The startup, therefore, bought specific cells and built a mechanical system around it.

EMO Energy developed a fluid in which the cells would be immersed. The fluid transmits heat more efficiently, absorbs energy in case of a cell blast and prevents electricity transmission.

Mr. Tyagi notes just leaving the cells in the fluid does not serve the purpose. The fluid has to keep circulating in a very specific manner. It also needs to be ensured that the fluid rejects heat to the system and in case of a cell blasting open, it has to absorb the energy quickly and prevent it from reaching other cells. So, taking it one step further the company built a layer of intelligence around the fluid.

“We have sensors that monitor every single temperature and voltage across the system. That allows us to put more power, remove more heat and maintain temperature even if you are operating at higher temperature, all at an affordable cost. You can use the software to understand what is happening at a cell level, improve performance, predict safety issues and diagnose and fix them. All of these except the cells have been developed in-house,” Mr. Tyagi explains.

According to him, there are three layers to the software. One is the several sensors inside the battery. They communicate to a Battery Management System and through the cloud some of it gets transmitted to an app which the user can see.

“There is also another layer we offer to the fleet operators where they can see all drivers in a very detailed a map. The driver’s driving patterns and habits and the way they charge can drastically change a vehicle’s range. Our technology would allow to rank performances based on battery health,” he explains.

The system can be connected to a standardized three pin socket which would give 80 odd kilometres after 30 minutes of charging.

According to the company, about 300 systems have been sold so far. It claims to have orders to the tune of 40,000. “We are scaling up to 10,000 now, we are still in the process of becoming bigger,” Mr. Tyagi says.

Net zero goals

Depending on the quality of batteries, Lithium-ion batteries cost between ₹12,000 to above ₹20,000 per kWh in India today. EMO systems comes to around ₹17,000 per kWh.

“The objective for us is to maintain the performance-to-cost ratio. If somebody is looking at scale in the ₹15,000+ segment, we offer the highest lifecycle there. We provide more than 2,000 cycles for any kind of cell chemistry,” Mr. Tyagi notes.

With its direct thermal management system and in-house battery management system coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, Mr. Ali believes EMO Energy can not only offer customers the best product features at optimal prices but also help significantly reduce battery pack imports from China.

“EMO’s modular design approach enables them to scale them across multiple mobility applications such as two-wheeler, three-wheeler, and four-wheeler passenger and commercial vehicles and also across sectors such as energy storage for residential and commercial applications,” he notes.

The start-up claims to have done business of more than ₹5 crores now with a turnover of more than ₹40 lakhs every month. The company currently works with 10 clients and holds 16 patents.

Mr. Tyagi notes that the company aligns its plans with a net zero goal.

“We think in terms of building a battery system, using our software to improve its health, maximise its usage in vehicles, at the end of it put it in secondary storage in home applications, maximise the use there, then recycle it, take the cell material, work with cell companies to put that in their cells, then put that back in the battery,” he explains.

“That’s a very long chain and we are at step-1 today.”

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)