Innolia sees opportunity in India's EV dream

Hyderabad: California, US-based Innolia Energy Private Limited, is setting up a Rs 225-crore plant in Telangana for manufacturing solar panels, lithium ion batteries and electric vehicle accessories as it sees huge growth opportunity for such products in the Indian market.

Founded by Arvind Reddy, a technology veteran with 27 years of work experience in top US companies, Innolia Energy initially set up a pilot manufacturing facility with Rs 30 crore, which it would expand in future.

"We will eventually invest Rs 225 crore in the plant. We are committed to generating 250 new jobs at the facility. The Telangana government has allotted four acres of land for our plant," Arvind Reddy told The Hans India.

He said pilot plant would start producing products from next month. "The pilot plant with 330 MW per annum capacity, will produce solar panels for grid, utilities, rooftop solar and all other applications.

Secondly, we will make lithium battery packs for solar, electric vehicles, telecom sector, industrial and medical applications," he explained.

Innolia is aiming at a production capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW) in solar and 1-2 GW in lithium battery space over next one-two years. "Indian market for lithium batteries is very big.

There is a government mandate for not using lead acid batteries in telecom, power storage, data centres, automobile and other sectors.

Even corporates are preferring lithium to lead acid while the government is also encouraging electric vehicles in a big way.

It announced Rs 10,000 crore incentives for EVs. Market for lithium batteries will grow 10 times in next 10 years. Therefore, we see a big growth opportunity for our company in India," Reddy maintained.

Pointing out that Innolia had integrated solar panels and lithium oil battery packs' production under one roof, he said this integrated manufacturing concept would help the end users.

"It will also help us in reducing production costs," he remarked.