Udit Agarwal
San Diego and Bengaluru-based AI startup Netradyne has raised around ₹58 crores from Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries for a 37.4% stake in the startup.
The investment was made by Reliance Industries through its wholly owned subsidiary Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings, subscribing to 4,058,647 shares, according to the stock market filing. The recent investment has potential synergies with digital services and communications initiatives of RIL and its subsidiaries.
Netradyne was founded by Avneesh Agrawal and David Julian in September 2016. It leverages artificial intelligence, deep learning, along with IoT capabilities, to deliver comprehensive solutions for various domains like fleet management, automotive, security, and surveillance.
The startup provides an artificial intelligence platform that combines deep learning computer vision with video to detect, reason and determine causality of events providing commercial fleets with timely meaningful data. It’s vision based driver recognition safety platform called Driveri, was designed to enhance the safety of the truck drivers.
According to Reliance Industries, the AI startup has recently begun commercializing its technology with a few selected partners across the globe. Earlier in June 2016, Netradyne had last raised $16 million from Reliance Industries. Other Indian players in the artificial intelligence domain include Active.ai, SigTuple, Niki.ai, Staqu, Intello Labs, Playment, Uncanny Vision, and Unbxd, among many others.
Recently, data analytics startup Goals101 raised ₹25 crores in pre-series A round from Nexus Venture Partners. Another cloud-based analytics startup SenseHawk raised ₹14.5 crores in series A funding from SAIF Partners. Indian government’s push towards digitization and new technologies likes artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT, has been a keep driver for the growth of startups in the AI domain.
“AI is like the new electricity. The new factor of production. Like the industrial revolution, it will transform every sector. We want to exploit it to solve big socio-economic challenges that India faces,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.
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