[Funding alert] Robotics startup Miko raises Rs 23 Cr in pre-series B round led by Stride Ventures

Robotics startup Miko, founded by IIT Bombay graduates Sneh R Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar, and Chintan Raikar, along with global experts in engineering, mathematics, design, and education has raised Rs 23 crore in pre-series B funding led by Stride Ventures.

Existing investors YourNest Venture Capital; Chiratae Ventures; Keshav Murugesh, Former Chairman of NASSCOM, and a group of angels participated in this round of funding.

Miko has built India's first companion robot.

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Sneh R Vaswani, Co-founder and CEO, Miko, said in a press statement shared by Stride Ventures, “Our growth journey till Miko 2 was about creating a product that meets the needs of today's parents who seek a positive and trusted gateway of technology. Miko 2 has now evolved into a powerful content subscription platform with global content alliances.

"We are on track to surpass the 100,000-user mark in the coming quarters with Miko 2 hosting hundreds of applications and use cases. It’s very encouraging for the entire Miko team to build a global consumer technology brand out of India."

After the company launched its first generation robot, the team launched Miko 2, a robot that can see, hear, sense, express, talk, recognise faces, remember names, identify moods, initiate a conversation, and learn from its own environment to intuitively develop a bond with a child. The press statement added Miko 2 addresses a complex need-gap of education, technology, entertainment, and hence an enabler in effective parenting, like none other.

Ishpreet Gandhi, Founder and Managing Partner, Stride Ventures, added:

”At Stride, it is our mission to make the credit ecosystem more accessible to startups. The investment in Miko represents Stride’s commitment to enabling frontier technologies that have the potential to disrupt the status quo. We are proud to be associated with a company that is revolutionizing pedagogy through interactive IoT.”

Miko has now expanded its user base across 90 countries, including the US. It claims to have seen a 20 percent month-on-month growth in engagement during the pandemic. It now has over 70 million interactions on its platform. The Stride team added the company also witnessed an immediate increase in demand as parents are hunting for an alternative to screens for their kids. 

Stride Ventures focusses on growth-stage startups with a focus on technology and innovation across different sectors. The maiden fund of the investment firm in 2019 had a target corpus of Rs 500 crore, which it plans to invest in 35-40 startups over the next three years.