In an interview, Gadhadar Reddy, Co-Founder & CEO, NoPo Nanotechnologies, speaks with TimesTech about pioneering SWCNT manufacturing in India and its transformative potential across industries. He shares insights on scaling deep-tech innovation, leveraging the HiPCO process for consistency and cost-efficiency, and building a self-reliant ecosystem. Reddy also highlights how NoPo is driving advancements in batteries, semiconductors, and sustainable materials through global collaborations.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: NoPo Nanotechnologies is the only manufacturer of SWCNTs in India—What inspired you to venture into such a niche and complex deep-tech domain?
Gadhadar: SWCNTs are the strongest known material to mankind. These nanotubes can one day make space travel possible. That was the thought that got me started on this journey. SWCNTs have been known to science for decades, the properties are well-documented, and yet nobody in India was making them. Over the period, I realised that producing this material in India will not only give NoPo a competitive cost advantage but also help the country become self-reliant in advanced technologies. Deep-tech is hard, but the difficulty is also what keeps others out. We decided the right move was to build the capability here rather than wait for someone else to do it.
TimesTech: Could you explain how your proprietary HiPCO process differentiates NoPo’s SWCNTs in terms of performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency?
Gadhadar: HiPCO High-pressure Carbon Monoxide is a well-established synthesis route that produces SWCNTs with a narrow diameter distribution and relatively high purity compared to arc discharge or laser ablation methods. NoPo has refined this process to improve catalyst efficiency and reduce post-processing requirements. That translates to more consistent electrical and mechanical properties across batches, which matters when customers are qualifying material for technical applications.
HiPCO gives us tight control over diameter distribution, which directly affects the electrical properties of the final material. Most alternative synthesis routes produce a wider mix of tube types, which then requires more aggressive post-processing to get to a usable purity level. We’ve refined the process parameters pressure, temperature, catalyst feed to improve yield and reduce the purification burden. The practical outcome is more consistent material batch to batch, which is what customers actually need when they’re qualifying SWCNTs for a specific application. Consistency at scale is harder than it sounds, and that’s where we’ve focused our engineering effort.
TimesTech: SWCNTs are often called “materials of the future.” How do you see them transforming industries like semiconductors, EV batteries, and aerospace in the next 5-10 years?
Gadhadar: In semiconductors, the interconnect problem at sub-3nm nodes is real and copper is running out of road that’s a near-term opportunity for metallic SWCNTs, not a distant one. In EV batteries, even small weight fractions of SWCNTs as a conductive additive improve cycle life and rate capability measurably some of this is already in production with other manufacturers globally. In aerospace and structural composites, the value is weight reduction without sacrificing strength. The 5–10-year horizon isn’t about SWCNTs becoming relevant it’s about supply becoming reliable and consistent enough for broader adoption. That’s the gap we’re filling. NoPo is working with global battery, electronics and advanced materials makers to bring innovation in SWCNT led products like advanced batteries, composites, coatings, sensors, transistors to the market.
TimesTech: NoPo is working with global players across the US, Japan, and Taiwan—What are the key use cases where you are seeing the most traction today?
Gadhadar: Battery applications are the most active right now specifically conductive additives for lithium-ion electrodes in high-energy density batteries. It’s a well-defined use case with clear, measurable performance benefits and customers who understand how to evaluate the material.
Use of SWCNT as conductive agents in coatings, epoxy, composites, polymers and elastomers are another area where we are seeing significant traction. Customers are looking to replace metals like steel and copper from applications like cleanroom flooring, paints, industrial gloves, composites with the use of SWCNT and make them more energy efficient.
Electronics and semiconductor applications are further along in the development cycle and expected to react commercial scale in a few years.
TimesTech: Sustainability is becoming critical in advanced manufacturing. How is NoPo integrating green practices across its production and supply chain?
Gadhadar: NoPo’s gas-phase process uses CO as a carbon feedstock, which can be sourced from industrial waste streams, reducing reliance on petrochemical precursors. We have also tested at lab scale to convert industrial CO2 to high purity CO required as feedstock in our operations. Once the process is adopted at pilot and mass scale, this will help make wasteful CO2 into useful SWCNTs.
We are focused on building our supply chain within India from precursor sourcing to purification and dispersion rather than depending on imports for critical inputs. More than 95% of our components and raw material is sourced from within the country. This reduces lead times for domestic customers, lowers the carbon footprint associated with logistics, and contributes to building a materials capability that doesn’t exist at scale in India today. We are also improving energy efficiency of our system as well as shifting to renewable sources to reduce our carbon footprint. Sustainability for us is about process efficiency and supply chain design, not just compliance. We publish our annual sustainability report based on GRI 1 standards.
TimesTech: With recent funding and growing global interest, what are your next big milestones in terms of commercialization and scaling up production?
Gadhadar: The immediate priority is increasing production capacity to meet the qualification volumes our semiconductor and battery customers need. Qualification cycles are long, so we have to be ahead of demand, not reactive to it. On the commercial side, we’re working toward our first volume supply agreements moving from sample orders to committed offtake. We’re also investing in application-specific formulations, because raw SWCNT powder isn’t always what a customer needs dispersions, composites, and functionalized variants are where a lot of the value gets captured. The funding we’ve raised gives us the runway to do this.
NoPo is working with global battery, electronics and advanced materials makers to bring innovation in SWCNT led products like advanced batteries, composites, coatings, sensors, transistors to the market. We are also establishing mass production capacities which will come live in 2027 to supply the material to the global markets. We are also building innovative electronics products like sensors using our SWCNTs which we expect to bring to the market by 2030.
