12 Jul Investors powering on robotics startups
Robotics startups in India raised $117 million in 2024 across 41 deals, compared with $54 million in 2023 and $28.8 million in 2022, according to data sourced from market intelligence platform Tracxn. This mirrors the global funding landscape, where robotics startups saw $18.6 billion in funding in 2024, a 116% increase from $8.6 billion in 2023, as per the 2025 State of Robotics report from F-Prime Capital.
Niqo Robotics, a supplier of robotic solutions for farmers, raised $13 million in 2024, while CynLr, which provides an artificial intelligence-based robotic vision solution for industrial bots, got $10 million. Material handling robotics company Ati Motors raised $20 million early this year.
Companies operating in construction and material handling are seeing significant business growth, said startup founders and investors. They are also among the ones seeing the highest investment activity.
Growing manufacturing ecosystem
Robotics startups are benefitting from the growth in another industry, automobiles, as both share several components. The growing automotive manufacturing ecosystem makes it easier for the startups to source these parts, helping reduce the cost and time to manufacture their products.
Peppermint Robotics, which supplies cleaning robots to enterprises, has built its own supply chain in Pune, sourcing from the local automotive manufacturers, founder Runal Dahiwade said. “If you rip it (Peppermint’s robots) open, you will see that the integrated circuit (IC) inside it comes from an auto rickshaw which is made in Pune,” he said.
Another fundamental change came from the electric vehicle industry, which brought down the cost of motors, batteries and sensors in India, a huge challenge earlier. “All these things came together and robot adoption is no longer about cost. That is an important realisation,” Dahiwade said.
Sateesh Andra, managing director of Endiya Partners, which has invested in robotics startup Perceptyne, said for robotic systems, real-time decision-making is critical, and that requires processing at the edge since sending data to the cloud introduces unacceptable latency.
“Until recently, edge computing wasn’t advanced or affordable enough. But with recent breakthroughs in edge hardware and the emergence of compact, efficient AI models, robotics startups can now build intelligent, responsive systems without relying heavily on the cloud,” he said.
Another factor helping the sector is increasing automation.
Pramod Ghadge, cofounder and chief executive of Unbox Robotics, which supplies warehouse robots to large ecommerce and delivery players for consignment sorting, said things have changed in India in recent times, primarily due to the ecommerce boom.
The number of packages that ecommerce companies deliver in India is huge. The companies are also dealing with high employee churn, fluctuations in demand during festive seasons. Automating some of the process helps partly address these issues.
The company is also working in global warehouses of retail brands across India, Europe and the US, Ghadge said, but did not disclose the brand names citing confidentiality agreements.
Manesh Jain, cofounder and CEO at Flo Mobility, which makes robots for the construction industry, said customers are now savvier and looking to automate some of the processes. The company is working with Larsen & Toubro and expanding to the Middle East, where there is a labour shortage and huge demand for construction robots, Jain said.
As a result, multiple investors are now looking at the space. Ankit Kedia, founder, Capital-A, said the venture capital firm is looking at more robotics startups for investment from its current fund.
Labourers vs robots
Easy availability of labour often poses a challenge to robotics adoption as Indian companies often favour human workers over having robots, Jain said.
Also, the purchasing power in India is much lower than the advanced economies. The construction sites in India are highly unorganised, making it difficult to bring automation and realise the impact, he said.
Another Bengaluru-based startup founder, on the condition of anonymity, said selling to Indian customers is hard as they are price-sensitive.
Jain said the Indian enterprises are waking up to automation and are working with startups for the same. “Innovation is happening now, but slower than one would expect,” he said.