by Abhijith.A.D(2016-2019)
https://www.facebook.com/abhijith.vjmd
Name of the Company: Invento Robotics
Name of Founder (s): Balaji Vishwanathan, Mahalakshmi Radhakrushnan, Bharath Kumar
City: Bengaluru
Revenues: NA
Headcount: 14
Industry: Robotics
Investors Details & Amount raised: Bootstrapped, Secured Loan
Invento Robotics wants to ‘Make in India’ for the world and getting Ivanka Trump and Narendra Modi to start your marketing campaign counts as a good first step towards that objective.
At the Global Entrepreneurship Summit being held in Hyderabad, the Indian Prime Minister and the US President’s daughter will come face-to-face with Mitra – a humanoid. A humanoid made in India, for the world.
Practice, not preach
Invento Robotics came into existence last year in October 2016 after the founders pivoted from their educational startup named Invento Makerspaces. “We wanted to change education with a maker-centric approach, but it turned out to be harder than we had anticipated,” shares Balaji Vishwanathan.
It was in 2015 when a robot made by a team of Invento garnered much appreciation during a maker fair that made the founders realise that a proof of concept may work better to inspire.
The proof of concept can now be found walking in the corridors of Canara Bank and PVR Cinemas in Bengaluru, greeting consumers and telling them what they like best. Capable of face detection, face recognition, speech recognition, contextual support, and autonomous navigation; Mitra is a 5 ft tall humanoid.The 5-foot-tall is also serving humans in a few Canara Bank branches as well as PVR Cinema outlets in Bengaluru. Through http://www.mitrarobot.com, Invento Robotics allows Mitra robot for rent for interactive sessions at offices, hotels, and even private birthday parties.
“What Google does for the online world, we do for the offline world. The robot speaks to the customers, gets to know them and their preferences, and on subsequent visits makes contextual suggestions. Mitra can help businesses do better customer targeting. For instance, in supermarkets, Mitra is capable of collecting relevant data on your first visit and not only make suggestions on your corresponding visits, but also take you to that particular aisle,” explains Vishwanathan.
Mitra, adds Vishwanathan, can be used as a customer service agent in multiple domains like banks, hospitals, airports, hotels . The startup is currently focussing on two sectors – BFSI and retail sectors.
Six months after getting their first Mitra, Vishwanathan claims Canara Bank is already in the process of getting the robot working for them in 500 of their branches. “The bank has also extended a loan of Rs 80 lakh to us which would enable us to further expand and upgrade our services,” adds Vishwanathan.
The founders decided to go for a conventional route to fund their growth aspirations after the VC market in India failed to show much interest.
“Hardware ecosystem in India is very nascent and thus will take time in supporting high-end tech-savvy hardware products. Naturally, the guidance we were seeking in running a hardware startup was not easily available. The investor ecosystem also was not primarily looking for hardware products – hence funding was hard,” shares Vishwanathan.
It’s programmed to greet customers and interacts using facial and speech recognition, contextual help, and autonomous navigation.
[Ivanka Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were welcomed to the event in Hyderabad by Mitra, a robot built by Bengaluru-based Invento Robotics. Mitra was one of two of the company’s humanoid bots present at the event.]
Syzygy 