New age Indian robotics and consumer Electronics company, emotixTM on Wednesday announced receiving funding worth USD 2 million investment through funds advised by IDG Ventures India and YourNest.
Existing Angel Investors, Keshav Murugesh, Group Chief Executive Officer of WNS Global Services and many potential investors participated in the funding round.
Companion or social robots go a step beyond voice assisted devices. They incorporate emotion. This is achieved by going beyond the speech interface to include non-verbal cues like motion or physical gestures which enhance human engagement.
emotixTM has secured a technology leadership in this emerging category which offers a sizeable market especially amongst young parents. The company's first offering, Miko is India's first companion robot for children and has received an extremely favorable response within the first few months of its launch.
"The recent investment from funds advised by IDG Ventures India and YourNest is a great validation of efforts by the team. It will propel the company towards further research and development, accelerate launch of new products and facilitate foray into global markets. 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," said co-founder & CEO, emotixTM, Sneh Rajkumar Vaswani.
Miko which has been developed over a period of 2.5 years through 22 pilot testing across consumer groups is targeting sales of over 1,00,000 units by 2021 in India alone.
"It's not only a seamless demonstration of filling gaps in the life of the consumer but also an attempt to revolutionize man-machine interaction. These considerations and the attractive growth potential excited us to invest in emotixTM," founder and managing general partner, IDG Ventures India, Sudhir Sethi.
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"The differentiated thinking and ingenuity that Sneh and his team bring to this industry gives us confidence that emotixTM can scale, innovate and set new benchmarks in robotics and user experience. As part of our Nuture Capital vision, YourNest's Director of Technology, Satish Mugulavalli will formally join the emotixTM board," said Director & Fund Manager, YourNest Venture Capital, Sunil Goyal.
Miko started retailing through its channel partners in October 2017 and currently retails across more than 100 offline stores in India like Croma and Hamley's . It is also widely available in the ecommerce marketplace like Amazon and Flipkart. Miko has found an attractive market in young parents and forecasts 40 percent demand coming from Tier II and III cities of India.