Washington, Dec. 22 -- The Quad must reach an agreement on critical minerals processing and mining if it wants to meaningfully reduce dependence on imports from China, Epsilon Advanced Materials Managing Director Vikram Handa told HT in an interview, while discussing the company's $650-million investment to build a manufacturing facility in the US state of North Carolina, and how access to US capital and technology, as well as a bilateral understanding with Washington that India is a trusted partner, will allow a domestic EV battery supply chain to come up in India. Edited excerpts:

Can you tell us a little bit about Epsilon Advanced Materials and what the company does exactly?

I set up Epsilon Carbon, which is our parent company, back ...