Mumbai-based robot making startup Emotix has raised $2 million in a funding round led by venture capital firms IDG Ventures India and YourNest. The startup has created India’s first personal companion robot, Miko, which has the capability of engaging, educating, and entertaining a child the Indian way.

Founded in October 2014 by three IIT-Bombay alumni -- Sneh Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar & Chintan Raikar, Emotix is creator of India’s first companion robot Miko, and is a technology driven company focused at developing emotionally intelligent systems in verticals of Robotics, Internet of things and Artificial Intelligence.

The funds raised will be used for new product development and research in the area of consumer robotics focussed on emotional and artificial intelligence. The funds will also be used for creating new consumer robot products that the company will roll out in the coming years.

The startup unveiled the Miko prototype at recent CES 2018, a global electronics event. The startup is going to address one of Miko's limitations with the refresh, which is called Miko Plus. While Miko requires you to use a smartphone to issue commands to the robot, Miko Plus will allow you to issue voice commands directly, with no smartphone involved.

Miko Robot

Priced at Rs.19,000, Miko is an emotionally intelligent robot capable of engaging, educating and entertaining. Designed for children above the ages of five, this pint-sized package has access to a wide pool of knowledge which it conveys to a child in a conversational manner.

“Over the past two-and-a-half years, we have created a hardware product for consumers specifically focusing on children from the age of 5 to their teenage years. The robot Miko has a conversation and can teach them about diverse things from flowers to cars,” Sneh Vaswani, cofounder of Emotix said.

The startup claim to have seen an equal amount of traction from parents in tier-II and -III cities, as well as from those in the metros. “Besides a consistent growth rate in sales, we surpass some of the best AI conversational stacks globally, by clocking 37 times the average session duration with our user as compared to industry peers,” added Vaswani.

The above news was first reported in Economic Times.

To recall, in December, H-Bots Robotics, a Hyderabad-based robotics startup, has unveiled world’s first smart policing robot. The robot is developed by the startup is fully 'Made in India', using all the components sourced from within the country.

In April 2017, a Chennai based startup had launched a a food serving robot and soon after a Mall robot was also launched by an another Indian startup.

Recent Robotic Startups Fundings



In February, Chennai-based Planys Technologies, an IIT-Madras incubated marine robotics startup that provides under-water inspection and survey solutions using custom-built submersible drones, has raised ₹14 Cr Series A round from Kris Gopalakrishnan along with investors who participated in this round including Pratithi Investment Trust, MEMG (Manipal Education and Medical Group) Family Office, and some HNIs including S Gopal, former director of Chemplast Sanmar.

In the same month, Kerala-based GenRobotic, along with three other startups, has raised funding from Unicorn India Ventures.
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