Why Indian robots are taking a crash course in Mandarin

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Why Indian robots are taking a crash course in Mandarin
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From a corner of the stage, Balaji Viswanathan watched nervously as his startup’s robot, Mitra, came out to greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ivanka Trump, the US President’s daughter, at the opening of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.
“You don’t want your robot punching the prime minister or the US president’s daughter,” says Viswanathan, who can joke about it now.
Nevertheless, Mitra’s debut on a global stage was a crucial juncture for Invento Robotics, which had been pushing through its development phase with seed funding from Viswanathan and his co-founder, Mahalakshmi Radhakrushnun, along with some angels.
That’s why Invento’s chief revenue officer, Sumit Roy, is more excited about seeing the robots gain traction in enterprises.
Banks, retailers and others have been running pilots with the robots for customer engagement and analytics.
But that is also a ticket for Indian startups to enter the global robotics arena as software innovation becomes just as important, if not more than hardware.
SoftBank’s Pepper robots may look cuter with a wider range of movements, admits Viswanathan, but he believes Mitra can outdo its Japanese counterpart in brain power.
“One guy calls from an industrial warehouse, another is on the phone from a bank an hour later, and a third guy is convinced that if we give him what he wants, he can sell 100 robots.”
Viswanathan himself started the company in Bengaluru three years ago after relocating from Boston in the US, where all kinds of consumer robots were appearing.
“The thing that kills robotics companies is lack of focus on their core business.”
One of these is Spody, Invento’s new robotic shopping cart that recognizes you, scans your shopping list, leads you to spots in the aisles, shows you offers and connects with payment systems.
Entering the Chinese market, which Viswanathan expects to scale up by March next year, would be a huge validation for Invento’s robots competing with a variety of Chinese robots

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