What we talked about
Dr. Priyadarshi Panda is the founder and CEO of International Battery Company (IBC), a lithium-ion product company that works “from molecule to working product.” In this episode, he and Federico explore how his journey from small molecules and particle materials to 22 nm chip problems at Intel led him to building batteries that power the energy transition.
Show notes
Dr. Priyadarshi Panda went from working on Intel’s 4-nanometer chip nodes to building prismatic lithium-ion battery cells now powering over 1,200 two-wheelers on the streets of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Bhubaneswar. His company compressed what typically takes five or more years in the battery industry, from product concept to commercial sales, into under 18 months, by applying the same design-for-manufacturing discipline he learned in semiconductors.
What we covered
- IBC operates across three verticals simultaneously: innovating on anode and cathode materials in an ex-China supply chain, building drop-in electrochemistry devices that any manufacturer can use, and producing finished prismatic battery products, a combination Dr. Panda says no other company in the world does today.
- The choice of prismatic form factor over cylindrical or pouch is not just about shape, prismatic cells use a tabless design that dramatically reduces contact resistance under high current draw, enabling both faster charging and higher discharge rates without dangerous heat buildup.
- China’s battery dominance isn’t just about scale: Chinese material startups receive government grants that don’t need to be repaid and bank loans at 0.5–1% interest with 5–6 year payment moratoriums, conditions that are structurally impossible to replicate for innovators elsewhere.
- IBC’s first commercial product, the Prabal Thousand, was designed specifically for Indian two-wheeler manufacturers after a “scorecard analysis” revealed customers’ top two needs: high cycle life and tight manufacturing tolerances, the existing market required 20% cell scrapping due to poor consistency in competing products.
- Their Prabal 3000 and 3100 products use high-nickel cathodes with silicon-graphite anodes, delivering roughly 30–40% higher energy density than standard cells, enough to push an EV from around 350 miles to 500-plus miles per charge, while also enabling 6–8C discharge rates for faster acceleration.
- Dr. Panda argues the single most important shift for climate tech is philanthropic funding with zero ROI expectations, pointing to billionaires enriched by the AI era as the logical funders, because the profit motive alone cannot sustain the long timelines and capital requirements of energy innovation.
About Dr. Priyadarshi Panda
Dr. Panda is the founder and CEO of International Battery Company (IBC), which operates facilities in Silicon Valley, South Korea (a 50-megawatt-hour, 35,000 square-foot RAP facility), and India. He holds a PhD from MIT and a bachelor’s from IIT Kanpur, and spent over 15 years at Intel, Lam Research, Applied Materials, and IM3 New York before founding IBC.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pdpanda
- Website: https://ibcbatt.com
Episode 85 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Dr. Preetayarshi Panda, also known as Dr. Panda. He’s the founder and CEO of International Battery Company, a lithium-ion product company building cutting-edge lithium-ion products with manufacturing at scale using physics and data engines. ⁓
He’s trained as a chemical engineer with a PhD from MIT and a bachelor’s from IIT, Campur. He has spent over 15 years moving from small molecules to complex high tech products with a deep background in particle materials and advanced manufacturing. He also worked at Intel where he helped tackle chip problems at the 22 nanometer and 14 nanometer and four nanometer nodes.
as well as advanced gate all around technological critical for the AI era across roles at Intel, land research, applied materials, and at IM3 New York. He has worked on some of the hardest problems at the intersection of materials, physics, and production focused on the battery industry. Now at International Battery Company, he’s channeling that journey.
⁓ into building better batteries and taking real leadership in the fight against climate change. Priyadarshi Dr. Panda, welcome to the show.
Priyadarshi Panda (01:38) Thanks, Federico Super appreciate it. Thanks for having me here. ⁓ Once again, thanks for the generous ⁓ comments on the background. And yeah, super excited to be here and share what I’ve learned through my lifelong journey ⁓ with the audience.
Federico Ramallo (01:57) Amazing,
So what first drew you into chemical engineering? When did you realize you wanted to work on climate and energy problems?
Priyadarshi Panda (02:09) Excellent question, Federico. So my journey in chemical engineering started pretty early in my life, you know, ever since ⁓ I have consciousness of, know, thinking about what I wanted to do, doing engineering for, you know, for people, like for applications, something that improves people’s lives ⁓ was something that inspired me very early on in my childhood. And one of the spaces that truly
builds products that impact people’s life is through chemical engineering. Chemical engineering, you know, has a part to play in, you name it, know, plastics, polymers, you know, anything that, you know, the jacket you wear, you know, in pharmaceuticals to provide medicine to people. Healthcare finds usage in very simple things, you know, the packaging material that you use and, know, through chemical engineering, you can make it environmental friendly, can be
in very complex things such as semiconductor chips which you cannot even see the transitions with the naked eye. So the use case that chemical engineers participate in is very very wide and all of those applications have two things in common. A they are product centric they make real products that goes into you you can hold and feel and use and B
They are used for the betterment of people’s lives or can be used for making our lives better, be it more convenient, be it safer, be it, you know,
environmentally friendly etc etc. So chemical engineering was something that I was convinced I want to do pretty early on in my childhood. Now as a chemical ⁓ engineer you know through my training at ⁓ IIT Kanpur and at MIT my focus area was also based on my interest on application based research of small molecules.
Now within that space as you know, I grew in the journey transitioning into semiconductors. One of the things underlying themes that I started seeing was that there is a lot of focus as we build out products on energy. So energy is a very important thing. We have to optimize energy. have to conserve energy. We have to
produce energy in a renewable fashion, you know, so that, you know, it is green. So that energy focus grew during my research as well as during my work at Intel Laminar Applied. And parallelly, as the focus and energy grew, also came the…
thought process that all this energy and the transition that is happening needs to happen in a sustainable manner, you know, to make sure that we don’t impact the climate. And that is where that chemical engineering journey evolved into a journey into fight against climate change through providing better solutions in the energy space. And that is what we do at IBC.
Federico Ramallo (05:14) Amazing, amazing. So ⁓ can you tell us a little bit more of what are you doing at IBC? IBC stands for International Battery Company, right? ⁓ Can you describe for the listeners what you’re doing there?
Priyadarshi Panda (05:29) Sure, absolutely. Absolutely,
Federico. And I guess, you know, I was preparing for that question in some ways. That’s why I brought up IBC towards the end of that answer to the previous question. But International Battery Company, IBC, as the name suggests, you know, we are, we play in the battery space, primarily in the lithium ion batteries, which are an important component of transition from non-renewable to renewable energy.
Federico Ramallo (05:37) you
Priyadarshi Panda (05:58) There are two different aspects that lithium ion cells are used in. One is in mobility as we transition sustainably and smartly away from fossil fuels which are non-renewable and
climate impacting sources of energy for mobility. And the storage space as we transition from coal into more renewable sources such as solar, wind, water, hydro, we need to have some kind of storage so that we can use that energy at the right time without wastage of the energy we are producing, the renewably, and that is where storage.
battery storage comes into play and both of this mobility transition as well as storage to renewable energy, both of them require batteries.
An international battery company, make, you we do things in the battery space. And then, of course, we are international. So, you know, we are truly global company. We connect the dots between multiple different geographies. We are Silicon Valley, we are the heart of Silicon Valley. are in the, you know, Milpitas ⁓ Mountain View area and we are Delaware Incorporated. So, US is a strong presence for us. We are very focused on, you know, you know, kind of the thought leadership that is needed, which
you know US drives quite a bit you know in terms of new areas and Tesla came from the US and then we actively participate in the Asian ecosystem with a facility that we run in South Korea it’s a 50 megawatt hour 35,000 square feet facility where we build the proof of concept and we build the science we call it a RAP facility and then we also have presence right now in India where we are deploying commercially some of the solutions
Now the main question is what is the solution we building? So we play in the entire lithium ion supply chain space. We have three verticals.
One is on the critical battery material space. So we innovate on the anode and cathode materials as well as separate and electrolyte. We do that either through direct collaboration with some of our strategic investors and partners or through just suppliers by actively working with the suppliers. A big underlying theme there is to provide a fair ⁓ completely fair playing field.
for innovators globally.
and that is where we do not like currently the concentration of the knowledge and materials that is present in China today. So we work predominantly in a ex-China, non-Chinese supply chain space, which gives opportunities to US, Mexican, Canadian, European, Middle Eastern, Indian, South Korean, Japanese, Thai, Singapore, innovators to be able to truly build
something in the material space which can be adopted in a product. And that adoption in product is the second and third vertical. So what we do in addition to playing in the material space by
enabling that material space in an FeOc compliant, Xtina compliant manner. We also take those materials and build devices, which a lot of people also say is electrochemistry. And these drop-in devices are fundamentally the heart and soul of a battery. They contain four components, a cathode electrode, an anode electrode, a separator and electrolyte. And that combination can be dropped into any housing. It can be a cylindrical housing, pouch housing, prismatic housing, can be
any form factor can be any size. And when it gets dropped into a certain housing or casing, it becomes a product. But as a device or electrochemistry itself, can be used by Tesla, can be Panasonic, LG, Samsung, SK, BMW, Porsche, you name it, know, Tatas, know, Agra, Taz, excites of the world. They can be used by multiple players as a drop in device or electrochemistry, which can
be fit into the large manufacturing lines that a lot of people have already set up. So we provide these drop-in device solutions. And the last part of what we do is we take this drop-in device solution and make our product. So we actually are a prismatic product or form factor focused company. 80 % of the world is prismatic, you’re moving towards prismatic. So there are three form factors, cylindrical, pouch, prismatic, but prismatic is what, know, the world is now, you know, kind of,
⁓ very slowly but surely moving towards and hence we choose prismatic casing as our product and we take these devices which is our second vertical and put it in a prismatic casing to make working products which are now being sold commercially in India and we are also beginning to work with a very closely with a customer in the US to bring this product
to the market in the US after India. US is our second market. So that is not quite so much in a nutshell, but you know, because such a complicated space, but three verticals that we play in, but ⁓ in a nutshell.
We play in the entire lithium ion supply chain space from molecule to working products. And in that sense, we are very uniquely positioned. Nobody else does what International Battery Company does. So truly a disruptor in the lithium ion space.
Federico Ramallo (11:33) Amazing. when we think about batteries, from the user’s standpoint, we usually think that all batteries are the same, right? And ⁓ probably this comes from the ignorance of not knowing the specifics, right? ⁓ But what you’re describing is that there is such a plethora of… ⁓
information knowledge and innovation happening within the battery manufacturing process.
Priyadarshi Panda (12:05) Absolutely, absolutely. You know, this is a very rich space, Federico. You have hit it, you know, the nail on the head.
Federico Ramallo (12:11) Right, right. ⁓ And you were talking about the prismatic, the cylindrical, you mentioned another shape. Is that the way that you organize the cathode and the anode within the battery?
Priyadarshi Panda (12:27) That is absolutely correct, But that’s right, Federico. You are absolutely correct. So the form factor that I was talking about, pouch is the third one, basically. So what it does is you take the device and you can make a…
Federico Ramallo (12:29) Yeah, you’re doing great.
pouch.
Priyadarshi Panda (12:45) product which is dependent on your use case. For example, you look at your laptop.
or look at electronics products, use pouch cells. So if you open your laptop, you will see this flimsy little aluminum, you know, jelly kind of thing, which actually houses the electrodes, as you mentioned, you know, the cathode and anode or the device. And it’s also called the jelly roll. So you take that cathode, anode separator, jelly roll device, as you were mentioning, and you put it in the pouch and it goes in your laptop because that is the way it fits into the end product. Similarly, you can do cylindrical cells
there is space constraint because cylindrical cells are really small. So for example when you look at your double A batteries for your
Federico Ramallo (13:25) Right.
Priyadarshi Panda (13:29) remote control for your TV. The space is very small so it needs to be small cylindrical. Similarly when you start looking at very large installations for example in mobility when you look at a bus it has a very large battery pack. It requires a lot of energy to drive a bus or when you look at solar stations when you set up this solar power stations you have to build very very large container sized you know they look like you know entire you know ⁓ containers that you have
in ships right 20 feet 40 feet containers that is the size of the battery pack that needs to connect to a solar field to be able to store all that solar energy or generating so for that you need very very large batteries otherwise if you just use this tiny cylindrical batteries there will be a millions and millions of batteries which becomes hard to manage so that’s why you use very very large prismatic batteries but end of the day the electrode as you mentioned or the jelly roll or the heart
remains the same. It just gets morphed into different form factors based on the end usage.
Federico Ramallo (14:37) Right, so it’s a…
the shape, it’s a function of the space you have available or does it have significance, performance, improvements?
Priyadarshi Panda (14:51) So the shape has two connotations to it, one is it depends on the space available for the end solution definitely. But beyond that, it has two other things. One is the complexity or simplicity of the battery pack you’re building.
So if you want to simplify the battery pack, you want to use less number of units and that’s where you go to larger prismatic cells. So that is one of the other underlying factors that determines the usage. Last but not the least is also as you said, performance. When you have very high discharge rates,
Then a certain architecture like cylindrical, especially if it is a cylindrical where you have a nickel tab, so it’s called a tab design, not a tabless design, that becomes hard to use in high discharge use cases because you are drawing a lot of current, so you’re generating too much heat if your tab has a active…
Connection so there’s something called a contact resistance So current into resistance I square R is the heat I don’t want to get in the science too much But big picture if you have very large current draws you would want to have low resistance and for that a tabless design Which is something that pouch or prismatic uses is much more beneficial than a standard tapped design cylindrical cell So also from a performance perspective, what is the end usage? specification of performance
That also is a determining factor as to what kind of shape and form factor or housing or casing to use.
Federico Ramallo (16:30) Right, right, I see. ⁓
The other issue that you mentioned is heat, right? When you have charge and discharge. I think it’s when you charge it, you have heat, right? You have to dissipate, so the form factor can also affect how the heat is dissipated, right?
Priyadarshi Panda (16:48) Exactly correct. you know the localization hotspots when you charge or discharge both cases Federico you will generate heat because current is moving and as current moves you generate heat. So during the charge discharge process when you generate the heat you have to dissipate the heat. So those considerations also are important in making the decision as to what form factor what kind of housing or casing to use. So yes a lot of science ⁓
beyond that is used to bring a product to life.
Federico Ramallo (17:23) Right, right, amazing. And people that are struggling with these challenges, they can reach out to you to help them figure out all the hurdles and challenges related to that.
Priyadarshi Panda (17:34) Absolutely. No, no, we are also very very interested in enabling the space as I mentioned, you know, we want to provide a equal playing field to the innovators all around so we work very closely with Startups and companies in the material space in the US and happy to you know extend that globally we do work with a few players in Europe as well, but
when the material players are innovating and building amazing materials, moving that material from an isolated material to a device and product is something IBC can help and enable for the ecosystem. So any ⁓ mad scientists out there happy to chat with them and help them in the journey.
Federico Ramallo (18:18) That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s a very niche market, but it’s very critical because what you’re doing is providing the support for ⁓ a plethora of products that could be created thanks to your support, right?
Priyadarshi Panda (18:39) Sure, no absolutely and that is where you know ⁓ we do believe we are disruptor because of you know the range of products you know the plethora of products as you mentioned Fredrico that is something that is unique to IBC not a lot of people in the world can do that and our you know willingness to build those plethora of products with a startup innovation based
backbone. It’s also something that nobody in the world does today other than international battery companies.
Federico Ramallo (19:12) Right, right. You also mentioned the idea of diversify the manufacturing of battery products outside of China, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about what are the challenges for that and how are you supporting that transition?
You mentioned you have a South Korea facility, ⁓ What are the challenges that you see happening in the industry and how are you helping ⁓ to make that transition?
Priyadarshi Panda (19:55) Sure, that’s a great question, Federico. So ⁓ the beauty of how China does it, you you call it the beauty or the ugliness of how China does it, you take your pick. But ⁓ I will say the beauty of how China does it is it is an integrated system. So the material maker in China always has a way to work with a product or a device maker. And those product device makers are…
very exclusively working with Chinese material providers because they are mandated to do that. And what that does it, provides a customer source, a source for revenue, a source for capital for all these innovators in the material space to truly prosper because they have, they know that the device maker, the end customer, the end battery maker like a CATL will definitely buy materials from them.
That is a big challenge for the innovators globally outside of China because they innovate amazing materials. But how do they get that material from lab to fab, we used to say at Intel, you know, laboratory to fabrication to large scale manufacturing, that adoption pathway, that pathway from molecule to demonstrating that it is a working product.
Nobody is willing to support these startups in that journey. And when you don’t have that support, your ideas and innovations get stuck in the lab. They never see the light of day in a commercial manner because you don’t have the support from the end device and product makers to truly help you scale and truly give you validation, which will lead to funding for you to continue in your journey of innovation and scale. We are solving that problem.
Today, we work with multiple startups where we are taking amazing technology and morphing it into device and product through our facility in South Korea and doing one better by showing that it works in the field in India. So we are going from that lab journey to validation journey. are enabling that so that they can then go to their investor base and the community to raise additional funding for scaling and commercially becoming viable.
The other thing that we are doing, Federico, is that the ecosystem has become lazy. People have been, okay, I can find cheap solutions from China, let’s just use it. And that is where, if we continue on that journey, 10 years later, we will be having this exactly same conversation, only worse, that there are no startups or there are no builders left in this space globally because nobody can compete with China. China has built ⁓ beautiful.
slash ugly infrastructure in the space. That is where Federico, know, truly focusing on ex-China supply chain, truly working together with established players to bring skilled solutions at the device and product level, which only international battery company can do, which enables large companies to be invested and invest more money into building out large facilities outside China.
and encouraging startups by holding their hands in the journey from laboratory to validation.
at ⁓ a larger facility scale so that they can get adequate market recognition and funding and support to truly bring their innovations to commercialization. Those are the ways in which we are disrupting the space and truly trying to provide a fair working field, fair playing field to everyone out there who is ingenious, who is building something amazing. We want to motivate those people and we are doing that.
Federico Ramallo (23:46) Right. Yeah, I think that the manufacturing capacities of China is something ⁓ interesting. You mentioned it’s beautiful slash ugly, right? I think that ⁓ the achievement of building such a big manufacturing ⁓ capacity and becoming ⁓ the cheapest ⁓ option available, it’s commendable.
But then on the other hand, that puts all of the companies that are ⁓ using their products depend on China. And then that dependency becomes an issue. ⁓ So I can see the reason to or the motivation to decide to diversify outside of China.
One of things that I believe is in this idea of building companies that are profitable but also have a social mission, right? ⁓ Where the profit is part of what we need to do, but it’s not the, it’s the means, not the end, right? The end is a social mission, right? Social impact mission.
Priyadarshi Panda (24:56) Exactly.
Exactly and that is where you know when we talk about climate tech, clean tech, it is not driven by profits. It is driven by a larger greater good of mankind philosophy saving you know planet earth and when that is the underlying theme and you are building solutions in that space you know drowning in the sole purpose of corporate profits and hence enabling China. know China as you said you know builds at scale but they also have unfair business practices.
because the government supports them with huge grants, huge money that doesn’t have to be paid back. Similarly, the banking system enables very low interest loans in China at 1%, half percent, like ridiculous numbers, which are not due for five, six years. So you get long-term moratorium on your loan. So you get large amounts of capital from the banks. It’s their mission to give capital to builders at
very very low interest rates without the principal being due back for 5-6 years. And that banking system is amazing because even when you look at people, when they put the money in the banks in China, they are receiving half percent, one percent interest and nobody cares basically. The government just owns your money. But then the government gets to use that money to enable entrepreneurs at price points where global entrepreneurs or global companies cannot exist and function at.
So that is an ecosystem which is unfair in a global context from a business perspective. So the least we can do, Federico, is okay, that is happening good, but we encourage the global scenario so that, as you said,
we are not drowned by profits in this bigger mission. know this bigger mission will succeed if everyone globally can participate, everyone globally can have a chance, a fighting chance to succeed, everyone globally can build something as opposed to driving cheap over-dependence on China. So that is the thinking that how do we enable people here in this large mission because end of the day climate change
environment is not only a China specific problem, is a global problem which we collectively have to join hands and ⁓ contribute to bettering the life quality of mankind.
Federico Ramallo (27:22) Right. ⁓ How do you think that the industry could, what is the most significant change you think the industry should do ⁓ to have a significant impact on climate change, on the lithium ion manufacturing?
Priyadarshi Panda (27:42) So I do believe Federico that in the climate change, in a fight against climate as you said, profit cannot be the motivator.
So we need philanthropists, need people, good-hearted people who truly care about the climate and don’t just make it a political talking point or a talking point on social media, who truly believe, right? There are people who are owners of trillion dollar companies right now. Amazing what AI has done. Those people with billions and billions of dollars in their pockets should actively fund startups and innovators in the climate space without.
without any expectations of making profit. Think of it as a grant, think of it as a goodness, right? You have been given too much, you are paying it back to the community, to Mother Earth, by encouraging funding in the climate space with zero ROI expectations. That will enable innovators, true innovators to be able to build amazing solutions at a faster clip.
and being able to commercialize it in the climate space. The other thing that Federico will help is if we mandate multiple
you know, nations mandate that a certain percentage, you know, doesn’t have to be 100%, but at least 70 or 80 % usage will be ex China. That will also be encouraging to people outside of China to truly, you know, not lose the, you know, motivation or lose the, you know, the fight before the fight has even begun. Right. The fight should truly be based on innovation, truly be based on capability and not disproportionate amount of funding or disproportionate amount of usage opportunity.
that exist in China versus the rest of the world. So I think decoupling from China, truly funding without an ROI, return on your investment expectation, truly philanthropic based funding of startups in the energy space, enabling clean energy to fight climate change would be super amazing for the community and ecosystem.
Federico Ramallo (29:56) Right? mean, this reminds me of, ⁓ probably this is little bit on the sidetrack, but this reminds me of ⁓ people were talking that in the 60s, all of the innovation was ⁓ government funded. ⁓ And that’s, I mean, we can criticize the inefficiency of government, but one of the things that…
benefits that provided is that they could spend a lot of resources on one idea and they were able to build the atomic bomb and so many other developments throughout that era. ⁓ Again, in the human history, most of the innovation has been driven by war. I think that your message of ⁓ building innovation ⁓ based on the motivation of climate change, I think it’s great.
Anyway, that happened in the 60s and then throughout the years. Now most of the innovation happens on the private sector, right? And the private sector has a limited amount of resources compared to government, right? And there are a lot of small fractions of teams trying to figure out how to innovate, right? So it’s more of a struggle, right?
What I’m trying to go with this is that ⁓ I believe that the role you’re doing on supporting innovators ⁓ is this idea of giving them the support as the government gave in the 60s to innovators. And I think that’s going to be a game changer.
Priyadarshi Panda (31:44) Yep, no, to provide them a platform, right? To provide them with hope. So I think that, you know, at IBC we provide hope to the innovators, to the disruptors, to the mad scientists, you know, to people to, you know, not shy away from the fight, you know, and that is a, that’s an important mission for us here to help people to truly bring.
great solutions for the usage of mankind.
Federico Ramallo (32:15) Right. Another question that I want, I think you’re asking you is, what are your thoughts? You mentioned lithium ion, right? But what are your thoughts on this other battery chemistry, lithium iron phosphate? ⁓ What do you think are the benefits of using lithium ion? ⁓ Why did you, why are you choosing lithium ion as the base of your platform and research?
Priyadarshi Panda (32:44) Yep, so one of the important driving factors in terms of how we built IBC Federico coming from a very long history of manufacturing excellence, be it at Intel, be it at LAM, applied, you know, there is always the desire to not only build the solution, but to build a scalable solution.
And that is where, you know, when we design the device and product, we also want to make sure that it can be built at scale. The supply chain is well established. The fundamental physics at scale is well understood. And that is where lithium ion is the most mature. So it can make an impact today. Other technologies like sodium, iron, aluminum, you know, iron people are trying to do right now, zinc, you know, iron, you know, multiple kinds of, you know, zinc air batteries, iron air batteries, hydrogen fuel.
these are technologies that are
evolving but there is no clarity of at scale adoption. Lithium ion is the space that is well understood be it lithium, iron, phosphate, LFP, it lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, oxide you know which is NMC chemistry on the cathode side, it know graphite on the anode side, be it silicon graphite on the anode side, be it pure lithium on the know anode side to make it a solid state battery with you know solid electrolyte. So the different iterations
around the lithium being the mode of transport between anode to cathode and cathode to anode that is mature and ready to make impact today for scaled deployment. So we do keep an eye out for other alternative technologies but where we feel like we can continuously make immediate impact.
is in the lithium ion, through the lithium ion, focusing on the lithium ion fundamentals. And that is where a lot of the innovation work, scale up, deployment, building conviction, proof of point happens around lithium for us at IBC. Not to say that, you know, we do not have our eyes squarely on sodium based or, you know, aluminum ion or
zinc air, iron air, batteries, etc. But lithium definitely is something that we focus on more aggressively.
Federico Ramallo (35:09) Right, right.
Federico Ramallo (35:11) I saw those a lot of companies making promises, but then 10 years later, they’re still on the lab stage. haven’t been able to make it to you know, to make it a reality on the manufacturing side, right?
Priyadarshi Panda (35:28) That’s right. No, Federico, that’s right. You know, it’s so easy to sometimes get things done on the lab scale. But then, you know, to truly commercialize it, that is where, you know, I do believe there is a gap in the industry. And for that, you know, to be able to be truly commercial ready, there’s two things. A, from the get go, you have to have a clear understanding as to the path from R &D.
to commercialization. A lot of people get enamored by research and development. They do not think deeply enough as to is this manufacturable at scale. We call it design for high speed manufacturing or design for high volume manufacturing. So for us, know, anytime we build something, anytime we build the device, we think about scale manufacturing. We build the product. We think about the fundamentals of how this can be manufactured at scale. And if you don’t think of that,
on day one when you design the product, then you run into these challenges and 10 years later, you are still an R &D company. And that is, you know, both experience, ⁓ you know, enablement, a team that, you know, ties back into the thinking. at IBC, some of the people that we have, Kunal Jain, Josh Presley, Sasri Kuppanagari, you know, our founding executives, and then Ramesh Singh, Santee, all of these people
come with like, you know, 15 plus years of experience. That’s the minimum. I some people have 30 years of experience in the industry of truly building high tech product companies, truly having scaled, truly having walked that journey from, as we say, conceptualization to productization, basically. So a scaled manufacturing. that that experience enables us to make the right decisions and that, you know, that value of death.
when you haven’t thought about scaled manufacturing that has been the peril of a lot of startups and will continue to be if the right approach and mindset is not brought into the startup mentality, founder mentality.
Federico Ramallo (37:40) Right, right. ⁓ Can you share us one ⁓ success story ⁓ of one of your clients or one your projects that you were involved?
Priyadarshi Panda (37:53) Sure, now that’s a great question, Federico.
So I’ll give you know a little bit context behind this. So when we designed our first product, Federico this was in 2022, it’s called Prabalthausen. ⁓ It’s a prismatic product and the underlying device is a mid nickel with graphite with optimized electrolyte for cycle life. So that’s where our patent is around how do you get very high cycle life which is how do you get very high you know usage you know how do you get very
life, very large lifetime for the cell and that was done based on something we call a scorecard analysis. So we went on and you we talked to the customers in the two-wheeler segment in India and the two-wheeler segment is very unique because there is no support that you can give the batteries at the pack level because the packs are very small they have to fit into a very small device you know two-wheeler you cannot do you know as you said heat dissipation through
fast cooling that Tesla does in their large battery packs which they use in the Tesla car. So the cell in itself, the battery cell had to be designed such that it can dissipate heat by itself and is not impacted by the fact that the battery pack cannot have external cooling methods. So that is where you know we did a scorecard analysis, we looked at what really matters to the two wheeler customers, what are the current offerings and we realized that there is two things that they care for a lot. One is they truly want
give warranty or cycle life. So that’s why our focus was on cycle life. Second basically was that they want to get sales product that is repeatable so that they don’t have to do cell balancing. know the cells they were getting product they were getting was very large distribution so they had to do cell sorting they had to do a lot of scrapping almost 20 % scraps to be able to then cherry pick the batteries that can be used in the battery pack in the end solution. So for us that was the challenge
And this is another aspect of how do you build a successful company is you look at what is the need of the customers. don’t just imagine, drink your own cool air that this is what I’m building is amazing and I’m just going to build it. No, you go get the voice of customer. Based on voice of customer, you address the gaps in the current solutions they have. And based on that, you design and build the product, which we did with Prabhal Thausend. And in record time, within six months, we went from concept
to actually having a factory that produces that and within nine months we had that cell certified and in India and within 12 months we had battery packs made getting field tested and within less than 18 months we had commercial sales. Now typically in the battery space Federico as you said sometimes people take 10 years and do not scale anything sometimes people take five years do not scale anything the minimum time that it takes to build any product forget about scale
forget
about commercialization is two and a half to three years. So that three year journey we were able to do in six months. People take five years to commercialize products we were able to do in 18 months, less than 18 months and that is because we followed three things. One, we got the voice of customer and actually built something that is useful for the customer. Two,
we made sure that whatever we are building can be built at scale because the customer doesn’t want one or two solutions. They need thousands and thousands of solutions. Third, we also made sure that we have data analytics to prove that what we were
envisioning in the product design. The problems we were actually thinking we are solving in product design is actually materializing in the field through advanced AI and analytics on the field. So we have built the most sophisticated battery passport around our cells in battery packs and today we have sold over 1200 battery packs commercially on the field in India. So you have over 1200 two-wheelers running around cities in Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Delhi and Bhubaneswar in India which have the IBC battery packs. If you open the bonnet under the seat you will actually see in the chassis IBC battery packs with IBC cells that we are making in Korea today. So that journey basically demonstrates two things Federico. One is you can succeed. Two you can succeed in record time if you truly understand
scaled manufacturing and truly understand product design and truly solve a problem for the customers as opposed to trying to force fit.
what you believe is an amazing solution and getting customers to try to adopt, which inevitably leads to failure where the customer says, I don’t want it. And then you have something called an off take or sales problem. So that is where I think that, again, the team’s experience, the team’s expertise and the team’s desire to truly build something valuable, value creation versus valuation. have never tried to get valuation. We had always thought about value. What value am I creating?
Am I creating something useful and thinking hard and deep with the right set of people, with the right experiences which has enabled us to pretty much do whatever we have done in record time and hopefully we will continue to build ⁓ more tangibles on the field in record time.
Federico Ramallo (43:37) Amazing, amazing. Yeah, I’ve seen companies, founders, executive teams thinking about the company evaluation, but they forget about the user, right, in the process. ⁓ Yeah.
Priyadarshi Panda (43:51) Yep.
Value
drives valuation, Federico. Trust me, the markets are unfair, but to people who create value, they are fair. They will reward you because you become that disruptor, right? Like example in the semiconductor space, ARM. ARM built IP across the board for multiple end users in a global scenario. And we at IBC in the battery space are replicating the asset-like IP-based molecule to device to scalable product.
IP availability to the world basically. So in a X China supply chain environment. So every molecule that we use is X China. All the device IP and the product IP uses components that are X China, or FEOC, know, Federal Entity of Concern compliant. And we are providing this full usable set basically to the entire world, whoever wants to use it as you know, IP.
Federico Ramallo (44:49) Right, right. That’s amazing. the, haven’t thought about before, for knowing you, the, ⁓ the problematic of, you know, being able to customize batteries for specific use cases and how much of an impact that can have on, on the products. When you talk about products, you talk about the batteries. When I’m thinking on products, I’m thinking about in this case, the, you know, two wheel, you know,
bicycles, motorcycles, you know, I don’t know what it is, but, ⁓ two wheelers. Yes.
Priyadarshi Panda (45:22) Two wheelers, we just call it two wheelers. It can be a bike, an
e-bike, can be an e-motorcycle, can be an e-scooter, but a two wheeler, you know, it has two wheels. So yeah.
Federico Ramallo (45:33) Right.
That line has been blurred since e-bikes show up. Yeah. It’s a bicycle, it’s a motorcycle, it’s something in between. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s amazing because there are so many use cases where, you know, being able to work towards the battery, ⁓ customize the battery to specific needs and have a significant impact on the people.
Priyadarshi Panda (45:37) Yep, yep.
you know it also you know I want this message to go out Federico that if you bring the right
Thinking the right attitude the right team then you know you can be successful You know, I want that message to go to you know entrepreneurs budding entrepreneurs innovators all the ecosystem participants in this space that with the right thinking right strategy right kind of attitude and the attitude of a builder and operator truly trying to build tangibles and solve problems you can build success stories in this
rewarding space you know once in a generation kind of space right energy is going to impact the way every person lives in the world for
hundreds and hundreds of years right it’s going to morph it’s going to redefine ⁓ how people you know behave interact anything from like cars from like renewable energy e-aviation e-vehicles humanoid robots defense systems drones everything is impacted by this tiny little device which is called a battery cell and renewable batteries are the best yeah
Federico Ramallo (47:18) Right. ⁓ That’s amazing. Yes, I agree. And you’re providing a platform for ⁓ innovators to be able to build ⁓ solutions that otherwise couldn’t on their own. think that’s amazing.
Priyadarshi Panda (47:34) Yep, no and that’s why I shout out to everyone out there who’s looking for a platform.
to transition from a lab scale to a commercializable, productizable solution. ⁓ Happy to chat with them. Our website is ibcbatt.com So there is an email address to send emails to, which goes to our executive team. So please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well. Yeah, happy to support the ecosystem.
Federico Ramallo (48:04) ⁓ So, you know, we’re almost running out of time, so I’ll try to make a few last questions so we can wrap it up on time. But what advice would you give to young engineers who want to work on and climb at Harvard?
Priyadarshi Panda (48:20) Sure, so again, know, ⁓ topic that’s close to my heart basically. ⁓ One of things I would mention is, you know, be fearless. You know, it is a very rewarding space, but you need to have conviction and there is no substitute for hard work. So go out there, be fearless, understand deeply what you’re trying to build, get advice, you know, find mentors, talk to people, but…
not every advice needs to be followed.
So look at all the advices that you’re getting from the ecosystem with low ego. Don’t have too much ego. Yeah, don’t feel entitled. And then among those advices, think deep, discuss with your team and adopt the advices that work best to make your company successful, to bring something tangible. other advice I will say is do not change valuation. Do not change valuation. Just focus on value creation. Just focus on what is your mission? Are you taking the
steps to bring that mission to life basically to fruition and all of that comes with a very strong mind so you have to have a strong mind and hustle through this year don’t give up
Federico Ramallo (49:37) Amazing, So ⁓ one last question that I love cars. So I have this question, you know, kind of in my mind is when do you think we’re going to be able to achieve energy density ⁓ similar to petrol? Is that something you see that something happening soon or what are your thoughts on that?
Priyadarshi Panda (50:04) Sure.
Sure, actually because you said your car enthusiast I was actually expecting a different question when do you see that you know we’ll be able to accelerate very very fast basically which EVs actually do better than you know ice engine cars or the petrol cars which are called ice engine. ⁓ EVs can accelerate faster because of you know better response time you don’t have a combustion engine to you know burn the petrol but the answer to both the questions when can we you know meet the mileage
or get the distance from electric cars as well as can I accelerate even faster is through silicon anode. So we have a product called prabal 3000. In the prabal 3000 product we have two variants of the prismatic form factor. One is a thin prismatic single jelly roll and one is a little bit thicker prismatic two jelly roll design. Both of those use high nickel on the cathode side and silicon anode on the anode side, silicon graphite.
Now what that enables is two things. One is higher energy density by about 30 to 40 percent which means that from standard cells which means that your Tesla which is giving a 350 mile will be able to give you almost 40 percent higher which is almost 500 miles plus.
So that is where you start hitting the 500-550 miles, which is what a large SUV with a 20 gallon tank will give you basically in the US, 550 miles. So once you start putting those 40 % higher energy density cells, you will be able to get to 500 plus miles. That becomes very competitive.
Federico Ramallo (51:37) Right.
Priyadarshi Panda (51:49) In addition, the silicon allows the lithium to move out faster, more efficiently, you can, instead of a 2C-3C discharge, you can do a 6-8C discharge easily. When you do that 6-8C discharge, it means straight out of the bat. When you’re accelerating, you will zoom out from the blocks very, fast. So, Prabal3000 and Prabal3100 prismatic high nickel silicon-based cells that we have developed at IBC can solve one
problem that you asked for, which is the mile, how can you get the large mile, but also can solve the other problem, which is, you know, how can you accelerate faster and faster. So, yep.
Federico Ramallo (52:28) Hahaha
haven’t thought about accelerating faster, but yes, I agree with you.
Priyadarshi Panda (52:33) But because you said your
car enthusiast and a lot of people like that drive that power of course you will not get the noise of the ice engine that you know engine kind of you know kicking off you know that petrol you know blasting in the engine but you definitely will get the speed you know you will feel it with the high C discharge from silicon based high nickel ⁓ lithium cells.
Federico Ramallo (53:02) Right, right. I think that that’s great. mean, the I think that one of the well, there are a few, you ⁓ know, reasons that is my personal opinion, right? Why I currently stay with ICE cars or vehicles is because of the simplicity that I can, you know, work myself. But the problems that I’ve seen on the market electric vehicles.
They are built in a way that are designed to take to the dealership. They’re black boxes that you cannot, you you cannot do DIY maintenance, right? So that’s mostly the reason. And then the range and that’s why I ask about the energy density, right? Those are the big two. And particularly, you know, as I mentioned, I did a 2000 miles trip, right?
with an electric current electric and current charging stations is very limiting right ⁓ yeah
Priyadarshi Panda (54:04) Yep, absolutely. Yep. And that’s where,
Federico, you know, if you look at ICE engines.
It took 100 years to build the ecosystem, you know. ⁓ when ICE engines were started, people didn’t use to like they used to go to mechanics. They didn’t use to take the things in their own hands because the knowledge of how to deal with an ICE engine didn’t exist or it took time to proliferate. But now, 100 years later, people can become self-mechanics. Similarly, in the electric vehicle space, as you rightly mentioned, Federico, energy density and mileage will have
Federico Ramallo (54:12) Yes.
Priyadarshi Panda (54:39) happen.
⁓
Charging infrastructure will build out. Right now you can’t find chargers at the same frequency that you have a petrol pump, but that will build out over time. It will take 10 years to truly be competitive with ICE in terms of infrastructure. And last but not the least, as you go to second generation, third generation of electric cars, people will start taking matters in their own hands and start dabbling. The knowledge will spread. so I anticipate by 2040, we will be
doing all the good things that you are mentioning that we have been doing with ICE engines with electric cars as well.
Federico Ramallo (55:18) Right. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that because my thinking is, so I’ve done swap engines of, you know, ICE engines, right, on vehicles. And I’m hoping to get to a point where we can do, you know, just replace the V8 and just put a package that has the, you know, the power, the batteries, you know, because that would be, that would be better, right? On performance. Yeah. So.
I’m looking forward to that time,
Priyadarshi Panda (55:46) Likewise, we are living in very exciting world, Federico, for sure. There is so much that has been done, but it has created the platform for something much, much larger to be done over the next 30, 40, 50 years. So we are just scratching the surface of this energy transition, energy revolution, and lot more to be done. And IBC is super well positioned in that space. So we are looking forward to the next
you know, to five and beyond 10-15 years.
Federico Ramallo (56:22) Right, right, that’s amazing. I will ask everyone once in a while. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? ⁓
Priyadarshi Panda (56:30) And hope that is going to be yes,
we are making strides and moving forward by leaps and bounds. that’s our objective. We are execution focused, execution based and execution value creation through tangible product build will always be priority for us.
Federico Ramallo (56:36) Yes. ⁓
Amazing, So thank you very much for joining us today. It was a very enlightening conversation and I’m looking forward to what you and your team build next.
Priyadarshi Panda (56:57) Thank you, Federico. Likewise, and thanks for adding ⁓ to the answers and questions with your real life experiences that made this conversation ⁓ much more entertaining. So super appreciated for that and hope the audience appreciates this and gets this is informative for everyone. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (57:20) Thank you.