Metastable Materials, a startup focused on urban mining, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Seed investment round.
Akshay Singhal and Kartik Hajela, co-founders of Log9 Materials, an advanced battery-tech and manufacturing company, led the round. Among other angel investors, Sanjiv Rangrass (ex-group head at ITC Limited) joined Archana Priyadarshini, general partner at PointOne, as one of the round’s lead investors. Before this fundraise, the startup was bootstrapped.
“We are delighted and proud to announce our first-ever funding – which will bolster Metastable Materials’ capabilities to efficiently extract a plethora of valuable materials out of Li-ion batteries and then distribute them to the markets for application across several industries. We, at Metastable, are pioneering a first-of-its-kind, chemical-free technology and system in an eco-friendly manner that can extract a wide range of recycled materials from Lithium-ion batteries in order to provide a sustainable alternative to freshly mined metals and with the end goal of integrating with existing global supply chains. This fundraising will certainly act as a catalyst in augmenting our efforts in the near future.”
Shubham Vishvakarma, founder of Metastable Materials
The funds will be used to expand India’s lithium-ion battery supply chain infrastructure by extracting critical materials from end-of-life batteries and for the team, operations, and infrastructure expansion.
“Today, sustainability in all spheres has to become the core of every organization and human beings. Metastable is filling in an important gap and that too in a critical area of batteries and EVs. New ventures such as Metastable are indicators of the growing influence of Invented-and-Made-in-India. “
Sanjeev Rangrass, Angel Investor
Company Profile
Founded in 2021, Metastable Materials is a recent startup that is using patented technology to disrupt the urban mining sector. The metal extraction process is intended to significantly lower the capital and operational expenditures when compared to conventional practices, with a recovery rate of more than 90% for all constituent materials. Metastable has been dedicated to offering environmentally friendly solutions by applying the waste-as-ore strategy to reduce the life-cycle cost of lithium-ion batteries and give impetus to the circular economy. According to the firm, the startup, which is based on the concept of urban mining, has already filed four patents for its flagship metals extraction technique and will be collecting more patents shortly, and is also in talks with multiple suppliers for the commercialization of extracted metals.
Urban mining and sustainability
The method of extracting raw materials—mostly metals and minerals—from e-waste that is mostly found in cities is known as urban mining. Mining in cities provides environmental, economic, and humanitarian advantages. Urban mining promotes the circular economy concept, and increased usage of urban mining can help lessen the negative environmental effects of traditional mining.
“Urban mining will not only help in reducing the burden for newly-mined materials from the earth like Lithium but can also be an important piece in reducing India’s global dependency for raw materials for batteries. Therefore, process innovation is very critical to scale urban mining. To this end, Metastable’s proprietary process can help bring scale to this sector sustainably.”
Kartik Hajela, co-founder of Log9 Materials