Gridbots: powering PSUs and SMEs through robotics

The surreal power of robotics have smartly been adopted across multiple non-accessible regions by the humans. From cleaning service pipes deep under the water to collecting samples from the surface of moon, robots are now found across industrial applications, defence projects and automations among others. We had recently featured one of the smartest talent in the field of robotics, Balaji Lakshmanan who’s love for humanoid robots in inspirational for others. Building on the same vertical is Pulkit Gaur’s startup Gridbots an company that is building machines with intelligence and wide usage across multiple fields.

Gridbots is a young technology startup in the field of robotics, it makes use of technology, artificial intelligence and machine vision to produce robots which can be efficiently used as consumer products, industrial applications, defence bots, surveillance systems etc.

Founded in August 2007 by Pulkit, Gridbots was the result of his passion for robotics that could build innovative products to run by intelligence. Pulkit has an impressive career record, graduating from an engineering college in Jaipur. At the graduate and postgraduate level he worked across many companies and his experience on the resume goes upto as many as 16 pages. His efforts was also recognised by MIT when they awarded him the Young Innovator of the Year award in 2012.

Gridbots has a team of 35 members and operates out of Ahmedabad, they also have presence across other cities such as Jaipur, Delhi, Bangalore. Their first client was Indian Navy and since then Gridbots has come a long way. Today Gridbots serves some of the leading PSUs (Public Sector Units) in the country such as ONGC, ISRO and National Gas Corporation among others.

Vijaita Khandelwal, who serves as the Director at Gridbots shares the revenue model of venture. “Most of the revenues come through industrial sales from industrial & research establishments such as Indian Navy, ONGC and Institute of Plasma Research. A fair amount of the revenue also comes through pilot automation projects for SMEs”. Besides Gridbots, Edubotix Innovation Labs, a leading robotics products and service provider in the educational institution space is another venture started by Pulkit and that which targets educational institutions and universities and has been generating steady revenues for them.Gribbots received a grant of Rs 10 lakhs from the Union Government’s Department of Science and Technology, which helped kick start their primary operations and other research developments. Since then the startup has managed all the activities on their own and Pulkit says they are set to earn a revenue of Rs 10 crore by the end of this financial year.

Just as every startup battles with different challenges posed at them, Gridbots also had its share of difficulties days. Vijaita says: “getting quality and skilled labour is one of many challenges for us. Also convincing the clients about the power and use of robotics has also been difficult.”