Bootstrapped startup Yottaasys all set to rake in Rs 20 Cr revenue for its AI companion for heavy machinery

Bengaluru-based startup Yottaasys is all set to ride the wave of industry 4.0 and address the pain points in factories by making machines talk.

You ask how? Imagine you’re running a factory and your machines are facing problems because they are functioning independently, individually out of sync with the larger goals of your production line. Their efficiency can certainly be augmented with some sort of connectivity. One sure-shot solution would be to use the power of AI to change the way the machines work, with industry 4.0 applications.

When it comes to AI, in the absence of home-grown technical know-how, most firms approach an established IT service provider – but that would mean large-scale transformation and long-term contracts.

This is where Yottaasys offers a key differentiator. With an IT Services company you would be paying for a long-term contract and a fixed price, Yottaasys is a cloud-based solution which is based on a subscription and per user. Its AI solution is a one-stop guide to understanding machines through collecting data, organising them, and making machines function without hiccups.

ALSO READ

Duped by a broker, this IIM Calcutta alumnus started a proptech startup to ease the home buying...

Yottaasys was born in March 2018 after Dinesh Krishnan and Arun Pandey, who previously ran a services company for four years, decided to get in to an AI product because they were advising firms on their AI journey over the last three years.

Their collaboration in these business ventures has been a natural progression of a friendship developed while working at Oracle for several years. Dinesh and Arun worked in Capgemini and Oracle together. They have a business and engineering background.

"When we started Yottaasys on our own, we began as an AI services company. We spent time with several manufacturing companies that believed in the power of a data-based organisation to understand their needs," says Arun. He goes on to explain that industry 4.0 is essentially about using digital data collected from interconnected machines to predict and prevent failures.

AI to iron out the kinks in steel

The startup's AI platform, Nirmaan, is currently targeted at working with the heavy metal, steel, and aluminium industries. It is capable of assessing the tensile strength of steel in production plants and tracking damages.

Its core AI / data science technologies are geared towards identifying process drift, thus eliminating the generation of non-conforming materials and competently predicting the need for preventive maintenance. It thus replaces the need for data scientists. Arun and Dinesh built and trained in the software through their hands-on learning of the problems faced by clients, who were also the starting point of the data used to build the AI.

The product integrates features for sieving through tons of data, and enables predictive and prescriptive maintenance with IoT workflows.

“We are a true AI company and have put in a good amount of time and work in automating things. Nirmaan is a SaaS-based product, and we work based on annual subscriptions," says Arun.

The company does not want to disclose the names of the clients.

Yottaasys has so far raised $100,000 from two strategic investors. The founders have also bootstrapped the company with Rs 50 lakh. The company's revenues crossed Rs 1 crore during FY19, and they have now got an order book of Rs 20 crore which they will close in the coming financial year.

AI forecast plush with value

According to global research and advisory firm Gartner, the global business value derived from artificial intelligence is projected to reach $1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70 percent from 2017.

It has also forecast that the AI-derived business value will register at $3.9 trillion in 2022. This business value forecast assesses the total business value of AI across all the enterprises and vertical sectors covered by Gartner. Essentially, there are three different sources of AI business value: customer experience, new revenue, and cost reduction.

"AI promises to be the most disruptive class of technology in the next 10 years due to advances in computational power, volume, velocity, and variety of data, as well as advances in deep neural networks (DNNs)," says John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President at Gartner.

Working with big data is something that this duo knows all about. Their competition would be companies like Unfound and IERO. Unfound is funded by Axilor and IERO by Bosch. Uncanny Vision, Flutura, and Locus also offer competing solutions. But the product range is deep and wide, and that's where Yottaasys believes it can make an impact. While other AI-focused companies are churning out vertical-specific applications, Yottaasys is all geared up to look at any space that needs AI and wishes to move to industry 4.0.

"We are scaling up. The services business has laid the ground work for the product and we intend to reach a larger market and cater to several customers in the months to come," says Dinesh.

ALSO READ

[Startup Bharat] From portable machines that can save newborns to AI startups, these Sandbox Hu...