Meine Electric, APAC’s first iron-air long-duration energy storage (LDES) innovator, announced raising $750,000 (~₹6.7 crore) pre-seed capital from marquee investors like Antler, Rebalance, Venture Catalysts, gradCapital, 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.
“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,” said Priyansh Mohan, Co-Founder and CEO, Meine Electric, commenting on the company’s roadmap.
“Lithium-ion has shown its capability in peaking and integrating renewables over short durations. 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,” said Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, Third Derivative.
“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,” said Gowri Shankar Nagarajan.