Sameer Khatri

Sameer Khatri is a British-Asian entrepreneur and co-founder of Volklec, the UK battery manufacturing company based in Coventry. Of South Asian (Punjabi) heritage, Khatri brings more than two decades of senior leadership experience in global energy markets to his role at the company, having held executive positions at BP and Vitol — two of the world’s largest oil trading and energy businesses. His deep expertise in commodity supply chains, international energy markets, and strategic procurement gives Volklec a commercial foundation that is unusual for an early-stage manufacturing startup.

Prior to his career in the energy sector, Khatri trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young, building a rigorous financial discipline that underpins his approach to running and scaling capital-intensive businesses. The combination of EY-trained financial acumen and BP/Vitol-level energy market knowledge makes him well equipped to navigate the dual challenges of battery manufacturing: securing the commercial partnerships and supply agreements that make cells cost-competitive, and managing the financial complexity of a capital-heavy industrial venture.

Khatri co-founded Volklec alongside Imran Khatri, sharing the conviction that the UK could only realise its electrification ambitions by developing meaningful domestic manufacturing capacity rather than remaining wholly dependent on overseas battery supply. The company’s pragmatic model — licensing proven technology from Far East Battery rather than developing novel chemistry from scratch — reflects his commercial instinct for de-risked, rapid routes to scale.

At Volklec, Sameer leads the company’s commercial strategy, supply chain relationships, and investor engagement. His background in oil trading and global energy strategy provides a distinctive lens on the energy transition: an understanding of how large industrial supply chains are built, how commodity markets move, and what it takes to establish a credible new entrant in a sector long dominated by established players.