Ati
Motors, an all-electric autonomous Industrial vehicle maker, has raised $3.5
million in a pre-Series A round led by Blume Ventures and Exfinity Venture
Partners. MFV Partners and a syndicate on LetsVenture led by Livspace founder
Ramakant Sharma also participated in the round.
Ati helps add reliability, efficiency, and
safety by bringing in autonomous material movement in industrial environments
like factories and warehouses.
The
company will use the funding for manufacture and deployment of a large fleet of
autonomous vehicles in factories and warehouses, in both domestic and global
markets. The key focus outside of India will be in the US market where the
company will establish sales and system integration partners.
The
company was founded by Saurabh Chandra (sold his previous company Neev
Technologies to Razorfish of the Publicis Groupe) who serves as the CEO, V
Vinay (former professor of Computer Science from the Indian Institute of
Science; inventor of Simputer; co-founder of Strand Life Sciences) who is the
Chief Scientist, and Saad Nasser (19-year old prodigy) who is the CTO. Saad
Nasser dropped out of school when he was just 11, won an Intel Iris competition
where he designed a re-entrant rocket at age 13, and worked at Team Indus which
was India’s only Google LunarX prize entrant.
Their
autonomous cargo vehicle Sherpa uses a technology approach similar to that used
in driverless cars (the likes of Tesla and Google) and is more versatile than
warehouse or humanoid robots. Its 3D LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)
processes much more data than the 2D LIDARs with a worm’s eye view, typical in
AMRs which are fine-tuned to work in specific settings. This enables the
Sherpa, which rolls on automobile wheels, to go around inside a factory, as
well as outside in the yard or road.
While
Sherpa Tug, a one tonne trolley puller, has been deployed in tough
manufacturing environments with very rough conditions, Ati has also built a
smaller sibling of Sherpa, called Sherpa Lite, which has found excellent uptake
in eCommerce warehouses for order fulfillment.
Both
the Sherpa Tug and Sherpa Lite have been extensively tested on the IISc campus,
where the startup has a collaboration with Robert Bosch Centre for
Cyber-Physical Systems. The Sherpa Tug has also been successfully deployed at a
multinational auto OEM’s manufacturing unit in Chennai.