These Four Gurugram Founders Used a Centuries-Old Material to Build a Battery That Lasts 20 Years

One evening, as solar panels across India absorbed the last light of day, homes, hospitals, and small businesses prepared for a familiar transition. The sun would set. And the question was simple: would the stored energy last through the night?

For most of us, batteries remain invisible. They sit inside inverters, under rooftops, inside grid stations and telecom towers. We think of them only when something fails. They cross our minds when a device overheats or a backup system fails.

For the past few years, Rishi Srivastava has been thinking deeply about that very moment. After spending 16 years in leadership roles at Microsoft, he stepped into a very different space and co-founded Offgrid Energy Labs, a Gurugram-based deep-tech company focused on energy storage. From where he stands today, he feels the world is racing towards renewable energy, yet has not paused to consider what happens to that power once it is generated.

“Batteries are often treated as disposable objects, not long-term infrastructure,” he says. “But if we are serious about the energy transition, we have to ask where these systems come from, how long they last, and what happens to them at the end of their life.”

That question became the starting point for Offgrid Energy Labs. Instead of chasing the newest material in the market, the team began re-examining one of the oldest. They went back to zinc and improved it using modern science, with the aim of building batteries that are safer, last longer, and work better for a renewable future.

‘Are we willing to take the harder path?’

For most of his professional life, Rishi had little reason to think about electrochemistry. His career began at Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1990s and later took him to Microsoft, where he spent over 15 years in senior leadership roles across India and the Asia-Pacific region. He oversaw product launches and managed large teams as digital technologies reshaped the world.

By the early 2010s, he found himself reflecting on India’s place in that transformation. Our country has become a global hub for IT services. Yet deep, science-led product innovation still felt limited.

“I had always believed that India’s strength lay not just in services, but in its depth of engineering and scientific talent,” he tells The Better India. “The question was whether we were willing to take the harder path, like building deep-tech products that take time, patience, and a tolerance for uncertainty.”

A few years later, he chose to test that belief himself.

In 2013, he stepped away from Microsoft and began investing independently in long-haul ideas that required patience and time.

Four years later, a visit to IIT Kanpur would pull him into an entirely new field.

Two scientists and a problem the world had ignored

Invited to speak on innovation, he found himself in conversation with a professor who mentioned two recent PhD graduates exploring unconventional ideas in sustainable energy storage. Curious, though cautious, he agreed to meet them.

Dr Tejas Kusurkar, a materials scientist from Maharashtra, and Dr Brindan Tulachan, a medical doctor from Nepal who had transitioned into engineering, had met at IIT Kanpur and bonded over a shared concern. 

The global shift towards renewable energy was accelerating. Yet the batteries powering that shift came with unresolved risks and trade-offs.

“They weren’t focused on making small tweaks. They were asking a much bigger question. Can lithium really carry the full weight of the world’s future energy storage?” Rishi recalls.

Lithium batteries had become dominant, but concerns were growing at the same time. There were fire risks, performance degradation under daily cycling, complex recycling processes, and supply chains concentrated heavily in China. Tejas and Brindan believed that zinc, a chemistry more than a century old, deserved another look.

“I did not fully understand the chemistry at first,” Rishi admits. “But what struck me was the seriousness of their thinking. They were not chasing trends. They were solving a problem they believed the world would inevitably face.”

In the months that followed, the discussions kept going. And over time, the idea began to feel real enough to pursue.

By January 2018, the three had incorporated Offgrid Energy Labs in Gurugram. Soon after, Ankur Agarwal, a chartered accountant with experience in finance, governance, and regulation, joined as the fourth co-founder. Together, they built a team that combined scientific depth with financial discipline.

In the early months, the team moved carefully. They did not rush to market. Instead, they spent time testing the battery under different real-world conditions to see where it might fail. Some designs had to be reworked. Certain materials did not behave as expected. Each round of testing helped them understand the chemistry better and improve the system step by step. By the time they felt ready to move forward, the battery was stronger, more stable, and better suited for large-scale use.

How zinc came back into the picture 

At the centre of Offgrid’s work is a battery they call ZincGel. It is a zinc-bromine system built for stationary energy storage, which means it is designed to store electricity for buildings, industries, and power grids rather than for cars or mobile phones.

Zinc is one of the oldest battery materials. For decades, however, zinc systems struggled with efficiency, cost, and scalability. “What we did was not discover zinc. We asked why a known chemistry had failed to scale, and then set about fixing those constraints,” Rishi says.

ZincGel is built using three main materials: zinc, carbon, and bromine. All three are widely available across the world. India is one of the largest producers of zinc, and bromine is extracted from seawater in multiple regions.

“Zinc is mined almost 900 times more than lithium,” he notes. “There is no geopolitical choke point.” That matters because much of today’s lithium supply is concentrated in a few countries. For a technology that aims to power the world’s energy transition, relying on widely available materials changes the equation.

But availability alone does not solve performance. The real breakthrough lies inside the battery.

At the heart of ZincGel is its proprietary electrolyte, the liquid that allows electricity to move within the battery. The team redesigned it to improve stability and better control the internal chemical reactions. These changes improved how efficiently the battery stores and releases energy.

The result is around 90 percent round-trip efficiency. In simple terms, if you put 100 units of electricity into the battery, you can retrieve about 90 units. That places it in the same performance range as lithium-ion batteries.

“This is the only zinc chemistry that performs at lithium levels of efficiency. And we achieved that without compromising safety,” he says.

Designing for real-world use

Renewable energy storage requires batteries that can charge and discharge deeply every day. Many lithium systems struggle under such repeated stress.

ZincGel is designed with that daily strain in mind. It supports 100 percent depth of discharge without losing performance and is rated for over 7,000 cycles. Put simply, it can last for decades when used in places like homes, factories, or grid storage systems.

“We ship our batteries at zero volts. You can fully discharge and recharge them every day without degrading their life,” he adds.

From a safety perspective, the battery is designed to remain stable even under stress. It has already passed strict tests for overcharging, deep discharge, extreme heat, and puncture. These are situations where lithium systems often need additional safety mechanisms.

“As an aqueous-based battery, ZincGel naturally meets the safety thresholds required for certifications like UL 9540A and UL 1973. That is not an add-on; it is intrinsic to the chemistry,” the co-founder says. “We have already completed the necessary testing in line with UL 9540A and UL 1973 protocols, and the battery is compliant with the relevant safety and performance standards. Final certifications will be completed once our UK manufacturing facility becomes operational in July 2026,” he adds.

Recyclability is another important factor. The materials used in ZincGel are easier to recover and process at the end of their life. They are also less toxic than conventional lithium systems, making them better suited to long-term, large-scale use and more aligned with circular economy principles.

Putting the battery to the test

Offgrid began filing intellectual property in 2019 and has since built a substantial portfolio, with 61 IP assets globally, more than 20 of which have already been granted. In September 2022, the battery underwent a shell-supported pilot that validated key innovations in electrode and electrolyte design. Independent testing agencies such as Intertek certifed performance, lifecycle durability, and safety metrics.

“We were deliberate about validation before scale,” Rishi says. “In chemistry, claims mean nothing without third-party evidence.”

With validation complete, Offgrid is now moving into commercial manufacturing. Its first 10 MW pilot facility is being established in the United Kingdom, where supply chains and early clean energy markets are already in place. The facility will serve as a testbed to refine production before scaling further.

At the same time, the battery has undergone controlled field trials with Shell India and a small group of commercial partners to assess real-world performance. Wider commercial deployments are expected once the UK factory becomes operational, with an initial focus on commercial and energy-intensive users where safety and long-term reliability are essential.

A partnership grounded in chemistry and scale

A key step in this transition came with the entry of Archean Chemical Industries as a strategic investor. Archean is one of India’s leading producers of bromine and industrial salt, with decades of experience in marine chemistry.

“India’s energy transition will be multi-path and rooted in local realities,” says Ranjit Pendurthi, promoter and managing director of Archean. “ZincGel aligns perfectly with that philosophy.” Archean brings patient capital and deep manufacturing expertise.

“Scaling energy storage is not just about laboratory success. It requires discipline in quality, safety, and consistency, and an understanding of how these systems behave in the real world,” Ranjit explains. From his perspective, the battery’s strengths are particularly relevant for stationary applications.

“For microgrids, rural institutions, and distributed industry, safety, robustness, and cost stability matter far more than headline energy density,” he says.

In other words, for places that depend on steady and reliable power, what matters most is safety, durability, and predictable costs. Offgrid Energy Labs does not present ZincGel as a replacement for lithium everywhere. It is built for situations where long-lasting, stable storage is essential, such as renewable energy projects that need to store power for hours, microgrids in remote areas, industrial backup systems, and grid-level infrastructure.

“This is not a three-year startup story,” Rishi says. “Energy storage is a 30- to 50-year endeavour, and we have only just begun.”

The team began with a simple question: Will the power last through the night? Today, they are working toward a bigger goal. If renewable energy is to power modern life, the systems storing it must be safe, durable, and built to last. In a lab in Gurugram, engineers are betting that the answer may lie in a material the world has known for more than a century.

All pictures courtesy Offgrid Energy Labs

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