What does it take to build a sustainable energy startup? How about one that manufactures rechargeable bio-organic and biodegradable batteries out of agricultural leftovers? And what does the entrepreneurial journey look like?
Where did it all start?
According to Nikita Baliarsingh, Founder & CIO – Nexus Power, who began the venture with her twin sister, “Since kids, we were very fond of entrepreneurship as a genre and we were sure that we wanted to have our own company. I think we were about 10 to 11 years old and we had this notion in our mind to build our own company and brand… The startup phenomenon was something that seemed to come very late to India. Thankfully, my parents have been into business all their life, so we’ve seen a business environment at home… Plus, our school was really into it, so we got a lot of entrepreneurial exposure at school with business modelling competitions. And once we stepped into college, we were doing business management for our undergrad and we had a paper on sustainability, which explored the environment, concerns, carbon footprint and carbon credits… That’s something that caught our attention”.
Baliarsingh remarks, “At that time, around 2016 or 2017, people were talking about the concept of EVs, which were still at the concept stage, but weren’t sold in the market… Initially, we wanted to make four-wheeler EVs and be in the passenger vehicle segment, selling indigenously-developed four-wheeler vehicles. But, when we started working on that project, doing our research and building our concept, we realized that people are not actually open to EVs, as much as they are to ICE engines. The reason is that they don’t trust the battery component of the vehicle, whether it would blow up and how long it would actually power the vehicle. So, people were not open to accepting EVs. Then, we dug in deeper and then, we realized that there are more problems that the battery has beyond the range, charging time, duration and more”.
“Lithium was actually imported. It’s not found in India. We’re heavily dependent on imports, so that causes a problem of price, because it gets expensive to import and when you fit it in the vehicle, the vehicle also becomes expensive. So, the Indian middle-class market is not yet open to buying it. From an environmental point of view, it’s very hazardous, if left open in the air, burning out immediately with a lot of fumes and it’s not a very safe metal. When we were looking at these aspects, we thought about what is more abundantly available in India, reducing the dependency on imports and which is not as harmful to the environment”, states Baliarsingh.
Baliarsingh recounts, “We did most of our search online, reading a lot of research papers and that’s where we stumbled upon the idea of building batteries from proteins… Nobody was talking about it and we found this from an old book from the 1960s from our grandfather’s library and he’s a biochemist… Later, we were experimenting at home and parallely, the AQI of Delhi was reported as being really bad with crops being burned and no way of disposing of them. So, we thought of using plant proteins, which are natural and biodegradable, so we were trying to figure out how to do this from crops instead of chemical synthesization in labs”.
And what does product-market fit look like?
“When it comes to product-market fit, I think our benchmark was reaching a level where nothing has to be done to fit our batteries into their vehicles. We’re a B2B company working with OEMs, who have a fixed space for batteries in their vehicles. The design is very restrictive and there’s not much scope to fiddle with that or convince them to rebuild models or redesign vehicles. So, for us to just fit into the space was a product-market fit”, states Baliarsingh.
And do entrepreneurs entertain scenarios where things don’t necessarily go in the direction they want?
Baliarsingh remarks, “There have been so many spaces where being so young and being women has been a question mark in the minds of a lot of people. But, I think the very reason that we’ve kind of spent 3-4 years in the company and we have had investors on board is proof enough to pat our own backs that we’ve been able to be firm on our decisions”.
And what are the on-the-ground biases that women entrepreneurs face?
“As far as being a woman is concerned, I remember when we had just started pitching to investors. I remember one of the very early investors we were pitching to back in the early 2020s. After a detailed discussion, one of the first questions they asked was when we plan to get married, whether our potential husbands would join the company, what would happen to the continuity of the company, who would be there to take care of the business and more. I haven’t heard of a single man who has been asked about whether their wife would join the company or not”, remarks Baliarsingh.
And what are some lessons that aspiring entrepreneurs need to keep in mind?
Baliarsingh declares, “Being an entrepreneur is not just about having a kick*ss idea or having enough money or having a great time. It’s so much more about the emotional stability of founders, because there are a lot of highs and lows. As a founder, the emotional graph has to be linear. One cannot get very excited at the highs and very depressed at the lows… It’s important to stay curious, step out, try and see, because that helps you learn new things, helps you understand yourself better and discover fresher ideas”.
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