Battery materials and critical minerals company LOHUM has appointed Nobel laureate Professor Sir Konstantin “Kostya” Novoselov as Chief Scientist of a new deep-tech incubation and venture platform for advanced materials. It is one of the most high-profile scientific appointments yet in India’s private sector.
The platform targets what Novoselov calls the “valley of death”, the gap between early lab research (Technology Readiness Levels 1–4) and products ready for industrial scale (TRL 7–8). LOHUM, which says it is India’s largest diversified producer of sustainable critical minerals and advanced materials, will provide capital, infrastructure and oversight. It will commercialise the resulting intellectual property through a Central Funding Hub. Novoselov’s role is structured as a joint venture.
“India has world-class science and a growing industrial base. What we need now is the bridge between the two,” said Rajat Verma, Founder and CEO of LOHUM.
Novoselov, born in Russia in 1974, isolated graphene with Andre Geim at the University of Manchester in 2004. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms and the world’s first two-dimensional material. The work earned the pair the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, when Novoselov was 36.
He now directs the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials at the National University of Singapore, which he set up in 2021 with S$200 million in funding. The institute uses AI and machine learning to design “smart” materials for applications such as artificial tissues, selective membranes, batteries and catalysts.
His expertise anchors the platform’s Nanomaterials and 2D Structures vertical. Other likely focus areas include strategic and critical minerals and advanced magnetic materials.
The commercial opportunity is growing. BCC Research estimates the global graphene market will grow from about $694 million in 2025 to $2.3 billion by 2030. Energy is the largest end-use, as graphene goes into lithium-ion battery anodes, supercapacitors and fuel-cell membranes. In medicine, graphene-based materials are being developed for biosensors, targeted drug delivery, tissue engineering and neural interfaces, though much of this work is still at an early stage.
India already has a fast-growing incubation network. The IIT Madras Incubation Cell has incubated 457 deep-tech startups valued at over ?50,000 crore, including Ather Energy and Agnikul.
SINE at IIT Bombay has backed more than 500 ventures, including ideaForge and Atomberg. The Department of Science and Technology supports 190 technology business incubators, and BIRAC has funded 95 bio-incubators. In graphene specifically, MeitY has set up the India Innovation Centre for Graphene in Kochi and the India Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
Policy support is also building. The Centre’s ?1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme provides long-term, low-interest loans and equity for projects at TRL 4 and above. That is exactly the stage LOHUM’s platform is built for.
The Cabinet has also approved a `10,000 crore Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0, and the Atal Innovation Mission has 72 Atal Incubation Centres up and running. Under the National Critical Mineral Mission, a `1,500 crore recycling incentive scheme has cleared 58 companies.
India has more than 2.5 lakh DPIIT-recognised startups. Novoselov’s appointment is a test of whether India can turn this policy support into globally competitive materials companies.