NoPo Nanotechnology: World-Class Materials Science for the Green Transition

One of the biggest challenges I often hear to India's Clean Transition is that it must be aatmanirbhar, and not rely on outside technology. While I don't agree with this sentiment, it is clear that made-in-India innovation can help accelerate the green transition in both India and around the world. Today's start-up NoPo Nanotechnologies is a world-leading materials science company, enabling the green transition not just for India but around the world.

NoPo produced high-purity small diameter carbon nanotubes which have high strength, low weight, high electrical conductivity and a low carbon footprint. These Carbon Nanotubes (CNT) have many applications, but one that is particularly exciting for me is for high energy density batteries. It is well understood that silicon anodes can drastically improve battery energy density, but silicon tends to be unstable, making it unsuitable for many cycle lives. Reinforcing the anode with Carbon nanotubes provides stability to the silicon, allowing for a 6x increase in anode energy density. This lowers the cost and improves the density of Lithium Ion Batteries, further enabling electric vehicles, even for higher form factors.

Other applications include water filtration, biomedical and electronics. At quantum scales, electrons escape traditional transistors due to the quantum tunneling effect, but carbon nanotubes can capture the electron in a single strand (<1.5 nm diameter), further shrinking electronics, helping them use less energy and allowing smaller, more portable electronics, further supporting the sorts of sensing and control we need to improve energy efficiency even further.

One aspect I love about NoPo is that they further reinforce world-leading deep science is possible India. The founders started building NoPo in 2011 and made use of government labs and research institutions to help build and test their initial products. While they certainly have had foreign collaborators, the underlying tools and technologies have been developed here in India. Interestingly, the majority of their customers are actually in Japan and United States, which face shortages of Nanotubes at this level of purity and quality.

While NoPo's emphasis on quality and performance is world-class, one key lesson I think for many entrepreneurs is that in their initial days the focus was just on getting product shipped. Since their first commercial shipment in 2012, they have continued to iterate and improve, but it was the initial customer revenues which allowed them to keep going and get feedback to further improve and refine their product lines. I have met a lot of founders who are too afraid of failing/putting out imperfect work. It is crucial to be willing to iterate and accept failure, while engaging with actual and potential customers as early as possible in the design cycle.

NoPo is continuing to innovate, for example by co-developing a Carbonyl detector with one of their customers. While they will continue to serve the crucial niche of providing high-quality carbon nanotubes for a variety of customers and applications, they invest ~5% of their total budget in R&D. This allows them to not only continue to improve their existing products, but work (with customers) on developing additional products such as detectors and transistors. Despite having built a world-class system that can grow nanotubes at scale, they continue to invest in new equipment, testing and other lab equipment to continue to refine and grow their product lines.