India’s Battery Giant Exide Bets Big on Lithium-Ion: Rs 3,000 Crore Bengaluru Expansion

India’s largest storage battery maker, Exide Industries, is expanding further into lithium-ion cell manufacturing, committing close to Rs 3,000 crore to the second phase of its Bengaluru plant. The investment will take the facility’s total capacity to 12 GWh, MD and CEO Avik Roy said after the company’s annual general meeting on Friday.

The plant’s first 6 GWh phase has already drawn more than Rs 6,000 crore in investment, with another Rs 1,400 crore going in this fiscal year. Revenue from the Bengaluru facility is expected to start flowing from the third quarter of the current fiscal.

Exide’s early lithium-ion output will replace imported lithium iron phosphate cells used in its Gujarat battery pack plant for three-wheelers, with roughly 3 GWh of first-phase capacity expected to be used this year. Qualification work for passenger vehicle battery cells is already underway, and two-wheeler battery pack applications along with NMC cells for OEMs are expected to follow by the end of the fiscal, subject to homologation and approval.

Roy called the lithium-ion push a strategic transformation, noting Exide will simultaneously continue investing more than Rs 400 crore this fiscal in its traditional lead-acid battery line. The company is targeting Rs 20,000 crore in revenue by FY28, up from its current Rs 17,200 crore.

The expansion lands as India’s lithium-ion cell demand, currently around 20 GWh and almost entirely import-dependent, is projected to surge to 130 GWh by 2030 — with nearly 100 GWh of that growth expected to come from electric vehicles.