ION Energy Accelerating the World’s Transition to an All-Electric Future

ION Energy is an advanced battery management and intelligence platform, focused on building technologies that improve the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

ION’s flagship product Maxwell is an advanced electronics platform for the Electric Vehicles and Energy Storage Industry. Maxwell Battery Management System (BMS) product line leverages proprietary algorithms to improve battery life and performance. ION offers three key BMSs: FS-LT, a centralized BMS designed for mobility and stationary applications, FS-CT, an advanced BMS with high feature density for low voltage battery systems, and FS-XT, a high voltage BMS designed for automotive and high precision applications. ION Energy’s SaaS product Altergo (earlier known as Edison Analytics), a digital twin platform for battery intelligence, was launched in 2019 to drive energy assets’ lifetime value and performance.

What is your background? What made you get into this line of work?

In 2015, Tesla Model S just came out, and there was considerable hype surrounding Tesla Model S. During the same year, my father contemplated selling his Skoda Superb car. I was managing product and growth at Haptik as CPO at that time and suggested my father convert his car into an electric vehicle.

I started learning how to convert an internal combustion engine into an electric one and bought the components online. As I started going through the process, I noticed that the battery pack contributed half the car’s cost. Soon, I realized that there is no point in converting an Rs.10 lakh-50 lakh car into an electric vehicle, whose battery alone costs INR 1 Crore. Hence, I dived into making the battery accessible and which would improve its performance and lifetime value. This will significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of the vehicle even though the upfront costs might still be high.

I decided to go deeper into the battery management space and realised that nobody at the time was doing it in India. ION Energy was founded in 2016 with the mission to accelerate the earth’s transition to an all-electric future. Today, we have built an advanced electronics and software platform for new energies and working with over 75 customers across 15 countries.

What inspired your business? What problem are you trying to solve and for whom?

While most companies are busy selling ads, I aim to create a generational impact by solving one of the biggest problems of our generation, ‘Climate Change’. As the world accelerates towards zero emissions and renewable resources, efficient energy storage still remains a question. This is where ION Energy comes forth, to give companies access to a technology infrastructure that blends advanced electronics and analytics, such as AI, ML, Big Data, with deep domain expertise in energy storage. Today, EV and Energy companies worldwide are leveraging ION’s proprietary algorithms for energy assets’ Health Monitoring, Warranty Management, Fleet Management, Predictive

Maintenance, Anomaly Detection, Performance Benchmarking, Charger Management, and Energy Demand Forecasting. ION Energy plans to shepherd the gradual and seemingly inevitable shift from fossil fuels to electric energy.

What is the vision?

India is moving swiftly towards an Electric Future. There are still many hurdles to overcome; however, the new electric revolution pushes us towards a battery-dependent future. ION strives to emerge as a leader in the Energy ecosystem, especially in energy storage and consumption space.

What has been your biggest win so far?

ION is just a five-year-old startup with operations in France and the U.S. Today, it works with more than 75 customers in the mobility and energy industry across 15 countries, including India, France, Spain, Poland, Australia, UK, and the United States. To date, ION’s customers have deployed 60,000 smart BMS in electric vehicles and stationary storage systems.

Recently, ION has raised $3.6 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, along with the participation of Silicon Valley-based Climate Capital, early-stage investor YourNest Venture Capital, Riso Capital, Venture Catalysts, and other angel investors.

Even after all this, our biggest win so far has been employing the best pool of people who have proven to be a tremendous asset for the organisation.

Words of wisdom for other start-ups?

In terms of practice, for aspiring entrepreneurs, people who are going to be Future Leaders; if I were to give one piece of advice, it would be around self-reflection.

Life is happening; if you know what happens for you and gives you an option, respond to it. All that you have to do is be conscious and self-aware to know that life is happening for us, not to us. So this notion of being able to sit with yourself and asking some very existential questions like ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who do I want to serve?’, ‘How can I extend the impact for the or the horizons of that service?’ And whatever it is, the ‘mission of building a sustainable future so that we have a future’ is underlying. A simple counterintuitive yet intuitive way of approaching how you can do your life’s best work.

Website link: https://www.ionenergy.co/

Biography: Akhil Aryan, Co-Founder & CEO of ION Energy, is an entrepreneur dedicated to positive disruption and enabling everyone to do their Life’s Best Work. ION is an excellent example of converting his childhood fascination into a business without an engineering degree. Akhil founded his first startup at the age of 14, and to date, he has founded three companies in San Francisco, Mumbai, and London. Akhil had the opportunity to witness the nuances of startup culture across three continents. In 2020, Akhil was featured in the coveted ’30 Under 30′ Forbes Asia & India and Entrepreneur India’s ’35 under 35′ list.