A start-up in Hyderabad, promoted by a UK-returned entrepreneur, is getting ready to deploy robots developed and manufactured in India later this month for numerous consumer interface tasks in different sectors.
“Some 65-70 robots are ready. We will be launching after Pongal,” said Ramaraju Singam, who has set up Vistan NextGen, the start-up, and with it a research and development innovation centre in the city. The firm, which has manufacturing collaboration with some enterprises, is also evaluating the prospects of setting up a production facility of its own either in Telangana or Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to the media on Monday, Mr. Singam said health, hotels and restaurants, retail and banking are the target customer segments. A release said the company is on a verge to introduce a series of robots in the next one year, custom designed not only for varied social, service and industrial work, but also for numerous consumer interface tasks.
RaaS model
He said Vistan was keen on introducing a Robot-as-a-Service model thereby providing an integrated service solution for various domestic personal and social robot assistants. RaaS, which is akin to leasing, reduces the capital and capability barriers for businesses to access advanced technologies.
Stating that the investment on the venture thus far has been British Pound 1 million, he said the company is also working on a humanoid, which is expected to be ready for launch by June. “With Make in India philosophy, we have decided to conceptualise, design and manufacture robots within India and in the process of building the entire ecosystem, we are training our vendors to design specialised circuit boards and also upskilling our workforce through learning platforms,” he said.
