Leveraging the power of IoT, HAL Robotics helps enterprises monitor key business metrics
Gurugram-based HAL Robotics uses IoT to enable real-time monitoring of business metrics so enterprises can focus on increasing their efficiency and accelerate growth.
At a glance
Startup: HAL Robotics
Founder: Prabhakar Chaudhary
Year it was founded: 2016
Where is it based: Gurugram
The problem it solves: Helps enterprises in real-time monitoring of business metrics
Sector: IoT
Funding raised: Bootstrapped
There’s no getting around it: The IoT is here to stay. The ecosystem of connected physical objects accessible to the internet is being heralded as the “next industrial revolution” as it holds the potential to disrupt how enterprises operate.
Enter HAL Robotics, which offers IoT-backed products and solutions to effectively monitor enterprise assets, helping organisations focus on business growth.
Prabhakar Chaudhary, Founder and MD of HAL Robotics, says: “We started by solving the issue of visibility and transparency of goods in e-commerce logistics where we wanted to enable live tracking of every consignment in transit.”
“However, we soon realised that issue is much larger beyond e-commerce and the dollar value of damages are huge; this gave us the impetus to start HAL Robotics,” he adds.
An IoT data platform, HAL Robotics’ devices are powered using decision science and machine learning. It focuses on delivering automation and visibility based on the environment and usage behaviour.
Users or algorithms directly interact with the devices and each device is equally smart and unique. It claims to be a new paradigm for multistack computing where intelligence is distributed across each layer of tech stack.
HAL Robotics’ solutions
After working on several case studies plaguing the logistics sector, the brand created two solutions, RoboTrack and RoboTemp to resolve the issue of visibility and transparency of goods in the industry.
RoboTrack offers a competent asset/shipment monitoring system to manage task force, locate shipments, and track deliveries of even smallest of items. Focused on tackling warehousing issues, RoboTemp enables real-time monitoring and control of the asset environment for increased productivity.
From the data logging process to real-time alerts, the two-way IoT gateway solution offers enterprises real-time alerts. Both solutions have enterprise API integration.
“You’ll get an alert on your phone if there’s something wrong – like temperatures are so high that your assets could get damaged or it’s too low for its health,” Prabhakar says.
In terms of products, HAL Robotics has developed three plug-n-play devices. ROBO, NEO and SNITCH can be plugged into any wireless device, enabling organisations to leverage the power of IoT and decision science.
ROBO is a two-way IoT gateway that has multi-channel communication links, enabling the device to communicate to any wireless device, including SNITCH and NEO. The portable device, which looks like a matchstick box, is equipped to handle multilayer exceptions and failovers.
SNITCH, a unidirectional sensor that enables monitoring of an asset’s environment, works in conjunction with ROBO. One ROBO can communicate with 128 SNITCHs at any given time.
NEO is a bidirectional sensor that can help enterprises monitor and control environment sensitive products remotely by attaching the sensor to any asset. NEO also works in conjunction ROBO. One ROBO can communicate with 24 NEOs at any given time and all three devices offer real-time updates.
Getting started
When Prabhakar, 38, was working on enabling live tracking of every consignment in transit, he realised that the dollar value of damages was huge due to multiple reasons, including unpredictable ETA, limited visibility during transit on both ends, and reverse logistics, among others.
Prabhakar is an engineering graduate from the University of Delhi. Before establishing HAL Robotics, he worked for over 15 years in advisory and management roles in IT & Data Science in TCS, Intersoft, and Transorg-Analyics.
He roped in Bijender Singh, Abhijit Borgohain, and Sujit Mishra to build the core team and help in his entrepreneurial journey. Bijender Singh, 48, was an entrepreneur with 30 years of experience in manufacturing and exports before joining HAL Robotics as President. In the past, he has established ventures in furniture with clients in Europe, US, and Southeast Asia.
Abhijit Borgohain, 34, has done his post-graduation from LSE and leads Operations for the company. He has more than 9 years of experience in consulting, product and strategy in Evaluserve, PBD Consulting (London), and Authbridge.
Sujit Mishra, 38, an engineer from NIT, looks after Product Management. He has 17-plus years of experience and has earlier led product innovation for Paytm, Microsoft, Lumata, and WizIQ. He was the founding Product Head at Paytm and also co-founded Privyplex.
Creating a niche
Asset monitoring devices are now offered by a few other companies, including Cellocator India, Asset Trackr, Roambee, and Nimble among others.
However, Prabhakar highlights that HAL Robotics’ USP is the 360-degree solution consisting of intelligent hardware along with decision science for real-time updates and visibility.
“The way we control the end-to-end solution is missing in the industry. We let algorithms monitor the assets. Our solution is based on micro-services model and is focused on eliminating all concerns,” Prabhakar says.
The journey so far
The first year went into product building at HAL Robotics and the company started generating revenue after entering the market in October 2017.
Over the last year, Prabhakar claims that the bootstrapped startup has grown from 2 to 25 employees, including the core team, hardware and software engineers, data scientist, sales and operations, among others.
The startup aims to monetise through a two-fold revenue model through plug-n-play widgets, which are end-to-end solutions and are already generating revenue for the brand. The other approach is enterprise solutioning. The company offers solutions like whiteboarding, PoC, partial rollout and final rollout, which also involves integration with existing systems.
Prabhakar says HAL Robotics reveals is in talks with a few Fortune 100 companies in the solutioning space to start monetising through this model.
Going ahead, the brand aims to become an operating system for asset management by integrating all kinds of sensor data for better decision at all tiers of organisational business metrics.
“We are ready to learn and adapt. At this stage, we are only thinking about our next customer and not the next year. But we do intend to take our product overseas by mid-2018,” Prabhakar signs off.
