India imports most of the critical metals used in batteries, even though spent lithium-ion batteries, whose volume is growing every year, contain many of these materials.
Bengaluru-based Metastable Materials was founded on a simple idea: those spent batteries are not waste to be processed but are ore to be refined.
Founded in October 2021 by IIT Roorkee graduates Shubham Vishvakarma and Manikumar Uppala, the company extracts lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and aluminium from spent batteries and sells them as refined commodity metals.
The founders first developed the underlying chemistry while they were in college.
Uppala studied mechanical and materials engineering before specialising in machine design and manufacturing at NBC Bearings, part of the CK Birla Group.
