Srikanth
Genrobotics, a Trivandrum – based robotics company has raised Rs 2.5 crore in Pre Series A round from existing investors Unicorn India Ventures. Anand Mahindra, who has invested in his personal capacity, has also joined as a new investor in this round along with SEA Fund. The round has been led by Unicorn India Ventures.
Genrobotics has already been working along with the Central Ministry as well as with State Governments in the mission of eradicating manual scavenging from the entire country. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs & Smart City Mission India has recognized the Automated Manhole cleaning robot Bandicoot 2.0, within a short span of time, they have deployed Bandicoot robots across 11 States in the country and hundreds of sanitation workers went through the rehabilitation process. Soon after the implementation at Coimbatore smart city, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has suggested and quoted Bandicoot 2.0, as an excellent example for enabling Zero Human-Intervention in the sewerage cleaning process.
The Young startup professionals at Genrobotic got a shot in the arm when one of India’s biggest industrialist Mr. Anand Mahindra, praised their innovation and expressed interest to help them scale up. Mr Mahindra has always been truly one of the motivators to youth who share a deep passion for philanthropic activities, after seeing this aspiring team’s work and thoughtful intentions on reaching services to the unreached ones, and he tweeted “There’s a lot of nervousness about the role of robots & AI in the future. But frankly, if robots can liberate people from this most degrading job in the universe, then I promise I will discard any doubts & always pray at the shrine of technology & robotics” and Mr.Mahindra has offered his full support on ending manual scavenging through robotic scavenging.
Vimal Govind, Co-founder CEO, Genrobotics, says, “we are so happy that Bandicoot is bringing smiles to those innocent ones and we believe that our efforts brought light into the stinking realities of Manual scavenging in India. It was a great moment for us when Mr. Anand Mahindra took a personal interest in favor of robotic solutions for the real crisis hidden in. Mr.Mahindra has offered his full support on implementing Bandicoots in each and every corner of India for putting an end to this dehumanizing activity completely and it has accelerated the process of transforming the Manual scavenging to Robotic scavenging.”
The funds raised will be used for further scaling up production of Bandicoot to meet the growing demand in light of eradicating manual scavenging and to develop new products and R&D to leverage the technology for the health care segment.
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, “We are happy that we went against our rules of not investing in just an idea in the case of Genrobotics. When we met them 2 years back in Kerala, the prototype was ready and they needed funding for a commercial-ready product. We decided to back them as we saw the potential robotics can bring to certain socially important issues especially if the team backing the business is as passionate as we have seen in Genrobotics. We believe that they have developed a globally relevant product and are already in talks with some international Governing bodies for its deployment. To facilitate their expansion plans, we have decided to back them up with additional funds.”
