Battery Cost Index

The ask

Build and sell a subscription data product that tracks historical and forecast battery pack costs — indexed to Bangladesh import prices, customs duties, and storage-system sizing — so that project financiers, EV OEMs, and IPPs can underwrite deals on local numbers rather than global headlines.

Why now

Lithium-ion pack prices have fallen from ~$1,200/kWh in 2010 to under $115/kWh in 2024 and are still falling; the problem is that Bangladesh buyers pay 20–40% more than the global benchmark once you fold in import duty, freight, and currency risk. No one is systematically tracking that delta. Meanwhile BD's first wave of commercial storage tenders and EV fleet financing deals are being negotiated right now — and the parties on both sides are working off spreadsheets and intuition.

Why Bangladesh

Bangladesh imports essentially every battery cell and pack; the gap between CIF Chittagong and ex-factory China is material and volatile. The BRTC and emerging private EV fleets, plus IDCOL-backed solar-storage projects, collectively represent hundreds of crore taka in annual procurement decisions. A local price series — even quarterly — would be the reference every banker, consultant, and procurement officer cites.

As a business

Revenue is B2B subscription: development finance institutions, EV importers, IDCOL project developers, and local banks pay ৳1–3 lakh per year for API + Excel access to the dataset. A free public chart (updated quarterly) drives awareness and inbound. Gross margins are high once the data pipeline is built; the moat is coverage depth and track record, not technology.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own data business. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

A data-native founder — ideally someone already inside energy finance, procurement, or the EV import chain — who can build the initial dataset credibly and sell the first five subscriptions before asking for capital. We'd fund the move from a manually curated spreadsheet to a proper API product, and help open doors to IDCOL, IFC, and the BGMEA fleet electrification programme as anchor subscribers.

Impact

By providing accurate local battery pricing data, this product enables Bangladesh project financiers and EV importers to structure deals 10–20% more efficiently — eliminating the risk-premium padding that currently inflates storage project costs in the absence of reliable local price series. If 10 institutional subscribers use the index to correctly size and bid even one storage or EV fleet procurement per year, the aggregate capital efficiency gain could exceed $50 million across the BD market. The product does not directly reduce emissions but unlocks the investment in storage and EVs that does — it is enabling infrastructure for the clean-energy transition.