Industry–industry partnerships, rather than state subsidies alone, will decide India's battery manufacturing future. Critically analyse.

The National Electricity Plan (2023) projects that India will need 208 GWh of battery storage by 2030 [1]. Yet most domestic demand is still met through imports [2]. In October 2026, Cygni Energy and Indus Towers signed an MoU to explore up to 1.5 GWh of BESS manufacturing for telecom use [3]. This shows industry beginning to build alongside the state, but it complements subsidies rather than replacing them.

State subsidies: achievements and limits

• PLI-ACC (Ministry of Heavy Industries, ₹18,100 crore, 50 GWh target) has awarded 40 GWh to four firms [2].
• Only Ola's 1 GWh plant has started, and it has been in pilot production since March 2024. The government names missing technology, skill gaps, imported machinery and missing upstream components as the causes of delay [2]. Cash incentives alone cannot fix these.
• VGF pays up to 40% of capital cost and has helped cut discovered storage cost to about ₹2.1/kWh [1]. However, 85% of the power must first be offered to Discoms [4], so captive users such as telecom towers get no VGF support.

Strengths of industry partnerships

• Assured demand: telecom towers give manufacturers steady orders beyond grid tenders, which lowers the risk of building a factory [3].
• Technology development: the MoU includes testing advanced battery technologies for reliability and efficiency [3], which targets the technology gap.
• Filling policy gaps: partnerships reach segments that VGF leaves out [4] and support more sustainable telecom operations [3].

Limits of industry partnerships

• Non-binding: the MoU only says the firms will "explore" a plant. It gives no investment amount, site or deadline [3].
• Cells vs packs: if only packs are assembled, cells will still be imported, which defeats PLI-ACC's core aim [2].
• Same bottlenecks: private firms face the same machinery and upstream-material constraints [2].
• Economics: the ₹2.1/kWh cost assumes two cycles a day [1]. Tower backup batteries cycle far less, so grid-scale economics do not carry over.

Partnerships supply demand and technology, and the state supplies scale and ecosystem fixes. The Ministry of Heavy Industries' fresh global tender for the remaining 10 GWh [5] shows the state still sets the direction. Going forward, MoUs should become binding, cell-level commitments; new tenders should address the bottlenecks the government has itself identified; and the Ministry of Power and DoT should let grouped tower batteries count towards the 208 GWh target. A public–private model of this kind can make Aatmanirbhar Bharat in batteries a reality and advance SDGs 7 and 9.