Que: Neuron Energy has moved from a young EV battery player to a company with institutional funding and a fast-growing revenue base. What have been the defining milestones in this journey, and how are you thinking about capital allocation as you enter the next

Ans: We started with a narrow question: could an Indian manufacturer build a battery pack that an OEM would put on the road and stop worrying about? Everything since has been an answer to that, and the answer kept outgrowing the question.

The early years went into capability rather than scale. We built in-house lithium-ion expertise and a dedicated R&D function instead of assembling what was available. That let us expand across 2W, 3W and commercial EV applications without rebuilding the product each time, and it changed the nature of our EV OEM relationships. Customers now come to us at the design stage, which is the milestone I value most because it is the hardest one to buy. Manufacturing capability and the product portfolio strengthened progressively alongside, and energy storage became a natural extension of the same core competence. What began as an EV battery company is now an energy technology and manufacturing company.

The current phase is about manufacturing scale, technology development, product diversification and larger energy storage applications. Capital follows that order: capacity expansion, technology and R&D, product development, working capital, and building capabilities for BESS and other emerging energy applications.

We are building scalable, long-term capabilities that serve multiple high-growth segments at once.

Que: You are expanding from EV batteries into BESS. What is driving this strategic shift, and how significant do you expect energy storage to become within Neuron's overall business in the years ahead?

Ans: It is less a shift than a widening. A battery pack does not care whether it is sitting under a scooter or beside a substation. The chemistry, the BMS, the pack engineering and the manufacturing discipline are the same set of competencies we have spent years building, so BESS is a natural extension of what we already do well rather than a leap into an unfamiliar business.

What makes it urgent is the grid. India is adding renewable capacity at pace, and renewable generation is intermittent by nature. That creates a parallel need for reliable, scalable storage: holding surplus solar and wind when it is generated and releasing it when demand peaks. The energy transition does not work without it.

So we see two complementary growth engines rather than a replacement. EV mobility remains a core focus and continues to grow. Stationary storage is the long-term opportunity building alongside it, and we expect it to become an increasingly meaningful contributor as Neuron Energy's BESS manufacturing and customer base scale.

Furthermore, our broader intent is to participate across the energy storage value chain rather than stay concentrated in one mobility segment. Both engines draw on the same core capability, which is what makes running them together practical.

Que: Talegaon marks a major manufacturing investment for Neuron. What is the strategic rationale behind this facility, and how will it support both the BESS and EV sides of the business?

Ans: Talegaon is where our strategy becomes physical. We have commissioned a fully automated facility across roughly seven acres with a 5 GWh annual capacity, built to produce containerised BESS solutions for solar and grid infrastructure at up to 1,000 units per year. Also, scale was our reason for building it this way. Grid-scale storage is not a market you enter with a pilot line, and this gives us the manufacturing depth to participate seriously as it develops.

The location was equally deliberate. Pune has a mature automotive and manufacturing ecosystem, which means engineering capability, an established supplier base, skilled talent and infrastructure we can draw on for our EV business as much as for storage.

So it serves both sides of what we do: scale, operational efficiency and the flexibility to move across mobility and stationary applications. We see it as long-term infrastructure, built for the phase of growth ahead of us.

Que: India's battery ecosystem is evolving rapidly, with sodium-ion, solid-state, and aluminium-air technologies all gaining attention. How is Neuron approaching these emerging chemistries, and which do you believe hold the greatest commercial promise?

Ans: In this business, conviction about a chemistry is usually premature. Our approach is technology-agnostic and application-led, because the right cell is decided by what the product has to do, not by what is generating headlines. We evaluate everything on the same terms: commercial viability, safety, performance, cost, scalability and suitability for the application.

On that basis, sodium-ion is the one we find the most intriguing. It answers real constraints around cost, resource availability and safety, and there are plenty of applications where the highest energy density simply is not the deciding factor. On the other hand, solid-state matters strategically over a longer horizon, given what it promises on density and safety, but the economics and manufacturability still have to mature before it scales. And aluminium-air is genuinely interesting science, though commercial readiness and practical deployment need careful evaluation.

None of this displaces lithium-ion, which will remain central across our established EV and storage applications in the near to medium term. We adopt and scale a technology when it demonstrates the right combination of performance, economics, reliability and manufacturability. Not before.

Que: As EV adoption expands beyond two- and three-wheelers into commercial vehicles and other segments, what opportunities is Neuron eyeing next?

Ans: Honestly, two- and three-wheelers taught us the hard parts. If you can build for Indian road conditions and Indian duty cycles at the price point this market expects, then moving up the energy curve is more of an engineering step than a leap.

So the segments we are looking at next are light commercial vehicles, commercial and fleet mobility, and higher-energy applications broadly. E-tractors and some of the specialised electric mobility categories also interest us, and frankly they interest us because they are difficult. Heavier vehicles run harder, they charge more often, and when something goes wrong, it costs a lot more. That is exactly where pack engineering and thermal design matter.

But I would not describe our opportunity as only electrifying more vehicle categories. We are also expanding horizontally into ESS and BESS, which takes us outside mobility completely. The real opportunity is to participate across the wider energy storage ecosystem.

Exports are another layer as we scale manufacturing and build products suited to those markets. Where this ends up, over time, is a diversified energy platform.