India’s quest for Viksit Bharat can get a big boost with ‘Battery Aadhar’
By Bhavana Mahajan
Batteries power life as we know it. In the 21st century, batteries, specifically rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), are everywhere. From your mobile to laptop to the two-wheeler used by your Blinkit rider and even buses, the trappings of modern life are increasingly dependent on this technology.
Increasing adoption of standardized designs and protocols is in turn leading to increased adoption across diversified use-cases as well as innovative models such as ‘Battery as a Service’. LiBs are here to stay, and as a technology that is seen as being suitable for Indian conditions, they will be around for the foreseeable future. However, batteries themselves are black boxes – maybe, even literally so, but quantitatively, definitely so.
What is the chemical composition, how many modules does it contain, even the exact date of assembly – these facts are typically only known to the manufacturer. As a result, when it comes to retiring a battery, it is unclear whether it can still be effective for second life applications or if it does go through the recycling process, how much of what can the recycler expect to reclaim out of it.
This becomes especially problematic if one is trying to institutionalize circular economy in production – thus while our ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ guidelines promote responsible recycling for battery and e-waste and even promote the use of recycled content; there is a fundamental information asymmetry in the market for second-hand or retired (end-of-life) LiBs.
Genesis of ‘Battery Passport’
In July 2023, in one of the most significant regulatory moves in the Cleantech space globally, the European Union adopted the ‘European Union Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542’. Enforced since August 2023, and to be implemented in a phased manner, the regulation mandates the Battery Passport for transport and industrial batteries with a capacity above 2 kWh starting February 2027.
This regulation is seen as core to EU’s goals of circular economy and carbon neutrality. India has similar but larger such ‘green and clean’ ambitions that underline the need to institutionalize the tenets of transparency, accountability, and traceability.
What is ‘Battery Aadhar’
A battery passport or a ‘battery aadhar’ as the indigenous nomenclature goes, will be a system that is going to be built on assigning a unique digital identity to each LiB battery so that it can be tracked from manufacturing to end-of-life and recycling and monitored for performance.
If done right, this tracking can be a very useful mechanism to trace the movement of a battery through its lifecycle, account for its physical whereabouts and change of hands, and ensure clear information is made available on its chemistry and composition. Such a tracking mechanism can be a very effective means of ensuring compliance with national and international standards and in the medium to long run, act as a deterrent to counterfeit products. It can also be used to trace the availability and presence of critical materials (in active LiBs) in the country, at any point in time.
From a consumer point of view, transparent data on battery origin and performance can reassure buyers about quality and safety of batteries, supporting broader EV adoption. Aggregated data from Battery Aadhaar can inform industrial standards, recycling guidelines, and environmental policies, supporting India’s ambitious climate and mobility targets.
But, the best of ideas can fall flat if not implemented right.
What Lies Ahead
In India, Battery Aadhar was launched as an initiative at the Battery Summit held in New Delhi on 28th May 2025 by a consortium of industry players, academia, and think-tanks (Tata Motors, Tata Elxsi, NUNAM Technologies, IIT Kharagpur, WRI India, and others).
Responsible players in the mobility and battery value chain have been advocating for the battery passport mechanism to be implemented in India since last year. On the other hand, the Ministry of Heavy Industries, Ministry of Mines, and NITI Aayog, among others, have been holding detailed industry consultations to help shape the secondary materials and mobility value chain in India. Despite not managed or implemented directly by the government, the initiative has been backed tacitly.
Since the system’s open architecture allows for a private-sector led approach to be mainstreamed, it is important for the consortium to expand to include other major players from the auto industry. It is also worth seeing what role the government decides to play to take this from a pilot to scale.
After all, to be a true contributor to India’s Viksit Bharat journey, the data would need to feed into a national ‘Critical Minerals Dashboard’ which would help support traceability across the value chain and set in motion the base for evidence-based policy-making for ensuring India’s energy security in an increasingly unsecured global environment.
About the Author
Ms. Bhavana Mahajan is a Senior Principal at BORBHAG Consulting and can be reached at bhavana.mahajan@borbhag.com. BORBHAG Consulting is also the India office for McLarty Associates. Views expressed are personal.
