Building smart robots for the world, this Bengaluru startup aims to transform the way industries function
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Invento Robotics burst into the limelight in late-2017 when a five-foot-tall humanoid developed by the company greeted Ivanka Trump at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad. The bot, named Mitra, was programmed with technologies like facial and speech recognition, contextual support, and autonomous navigation to greet dignitaries (including Prime Minister Narendra Modi) at the event.
Almost overnight, Bengaluru-based Invento gained visibility in elite circles. Its bank loan got approved, it started getting corporate orders, and its promise of “made-in-India robots, for the world” intrigued global CTOs, some of whom invited the company to demonstrate its products in their respective countries.
“It was a game-changer for us,” Balaji Viswanathan, Founder and CEO of Invento Robotics, recalls.
It also fulfilled Balaji’s “childhood dream” of being featured in Amul ads, which are almost a commentary on our times and enjoy cult status in India. “That was a huge moment. Friends started calling me to say that they had seen our robot on a hoarding at Pedder Road (a prime billboard location in Mumbai),” he says.
Building high-quality hardware out of India
Balaji, of course, is a startup veteran, having founded and shuttered at least three ventures before setting up Invento Robotics in 2016. His single-point agenda was to “do for India what Sony did for Japan”.
The startup asserts that every bit of the design and manufacturing of Mitra robots is done within India. While many hardware companies assemble their products in China - something even investors insist on for sunrise sectors like robotics - Invento ensures that it does everything in-house.
We spent an entire year in exploration, and approached everyone from automobile manufacturers to helmet-makers. We realised that industrial design is not India’s forte. Our knowledge is limited in this area. So, we travelled to China to buy outer body shells for our products. We hit a roadblock when those got stuck at customs for over six months. In the first year itself, we figured out all that could go wrong in this business,” Balaji says.
And thus began Invento's journey of making in India.