Log9 Co-Founder Pankaj Sharma attributed the delayed salaries of its staff for the month of January on cash flow disruption as a result of reduced production due to machine installations.

Log9 Materials, a battery manufacturer, has laid off 115 contractual workers in addition to delaying the salaries of all its employees for the month of January.

Confirming the incident, Log9 Materials Co-Founder Pankaj Sharma underscored that the startup retrenched “115-ish” allowable employees in a “stepwise” category. But he didn't announce the concurring frame.

Sharma ascribed the bulk layoff to mechanism that led to decline of the manual trained workers at the lithium-ion assault manufacturing start-up.

Also, usually, in the first month of every year there is a reduction in vehicle sales because consumers want to buy the New Year’s models. So these two network effects came in, one is, we were giving less amount of batteries to the customers and the OEMs were anyway selling less vehicles,” added the cofounder of Log9 Materials.

On this financial crunch driven lay off activity, Sharma says, “There has been a lot of automation in the company. Since November, we commissioned automation lines, because of which the dependence on people has gone down. Now, we can make a lot more batteries because machines can make those batteries for us,”

He also added that the most of the payroll amount – 90 percent has already existed disbursed. There will be no turmoil from February ahead, he promised.

Established in 2015 by Pankaj Sharma, AkshaySinghal and KartikHajela, Log9 Materials invents batteries for EVs (Electric Vehicles) and other energy storage solutions. The start-up competes with the prominent players in market such as Ather Energy, Hero Electric-backed Exponent Energy, among others.

Since the foundation, the start-up has upraised almost $90 Million, including a $40 Million Series B funding round escorted by Amara Raja Batteries and Petronas Ventures in January 2023.