How Orangewood Labs is empowering builders through robotics
After making CNC machines, San Francisco-based startup Orangewood Labs pivoted to making affordable robotic arms that manufacturers and factory owners can afford and deploy.
About a decade ago, Aditya Bhatia was working in the furniture industry when he hit a roadblock with custom furniture.
“It was painfully slow and expensive. Designers had ideas, but translating those ideas into physical products meant weeks of back and forth with manufacturers,” he tells YourStory.
In trying to entangle that web, Bhatia had a question: Why can't robots make custom furniture quickly that designers actually iterate on? With that in mind, he partnered with Akash Bansal and Abhinav Das, whom he met at university and through robotics hackathons, to launch AI-powered robotics startup in 2017.
The trio were clear from the start: they wanted to empower builders. “We augment rather than replace human labour. Robots handle repetitive, precision tasks while we create new roles in robotics assembly, maintenance, AI training, and system integration. We're upskilling Indian technicians and engineers to become robot operators and automation specialists,” Bhatia, the Chief Product Officer of Orangewood Labs, says.
The nearly 30-member team operates in New Delhi and Bengaluru, and 10% of the employees work in San Francisco, California. Among the founding team, Das is the CEO of Orangewood Labs, while Bhatia and Bansal serve as CPO and Chief Business Officer (CBO), respectively.
The founders first started building Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines—machines controlled by a computer program rather than human effort—in a basement in Faridabad, initially serving architects and coworking spaces that needed custom pieces.
In 2018, the startup was selected for Y Combinator’s winter batch, where it raised $4.5 million.
A pivot to greater robots
As the team built more CNC machines, they happened upon another realisation.
“The real bottleneck wasn't in furniture; it was in access to robotic automation itself. Factory owners and small and medium businesses couldn't afford industrial robots that could transform their operations. The tools to automate existed, but they weren't democratised,” Bhatia shares.
In 2019, Orangewood pivoted from furniture to robotic arms. While the startup’s mission stayed the same, the “canvas expanded from furniture makers to factory owners and manufacturers who needed automation they could actually afford and deploy”.
Currently, the San Francisco-based startup offers industry solutions such as machine tending, bartending robots, and other industrial use cases, including AI-native Robotic Arms with proprietary AI-powered software, and its novel Robot GPT platform, a hardware-agnostic system for creating and testing automation programs without physical hardware or deep expertise.
“RoboGPT revolutionises human-robot interaction through natural language programming, where operators simply talk to robots instead of coding. This hardware-agnostic platform simulates real-world behaviour, eliminating costly infrastructure needs. With AI guidance and voice/text interaction, users learn and build as if guided by an expert,” he explains.
According to Bhatia, development took two to three years of focused work, evolving from rule-based control to LLM-powered systems combining computer vision, motion control, and NLP. “While the core platform is robust, we continue expanding capabilities,” he says.
Many parts are sourced from other countries, but the products are assembled at the startup’s manufacturing hub in Noida.
The business of robots
Orangewood’s first client was a small woodworking unit that took a gamble on its CNC automation. Bhatia says the startup’s early challenges included convincing clients that affordable Indian robots could match imports and managing component sourcing.
“We do client acquisitions through multiple channels. About 15% of funding came via social media connections. We conducted strategic outreach programmes, where we got our key clients looking to implement innovative tech/partner with startups. We also called fellow ecosystem players directly, asking how we can add ‘X’ amount of value to them directly,” he says.
With more than 25 clients across manufacturing, hospitality, and research, Bhatia says the robotics startup aims to get over 400 global clients within the next two years. He adds that the startup plans to do this by efficient marketing and inbound lists based on current client conversations.
“We believe it will be possible due to our blend of local and international component sourcing, combining Indian design with global quality standards for cost-effective, internationally competitive products,” he says.
The Indian robotics industry clocked about $1,621.1 million in 2024 and is expected to reach around $3,449.1 million by 2033. The founder says the industry has transformed from import-driven to indigenous innovation since 2016.
He adds, “Logistics, warehouse automation, F&B, and manufacturing now actively adopt robotics. The ecosystem matured from sceptical buyers to eager early adopters.”
“The coming decade will see human-robot collaboration with Indian engineers building scalable, cost-effective global solutions,” he says.
Orangewood Labs clocked over $1 million in annual revenue this year and has raised around $5 million across multiple funding rounds led by 7percent Ventures. “We are going to raise a Series A soon, in which we will invest in R&D and build our next-gen AI infrastructure to position ourselves as a leading Indian deeptech company serving global markets,” Bhatia says.
“In the next five years, we want to increase our revenue 20X, and expand into healthcare, logistics, and broader automation.”
Andrew J Scott, Managing Partner of 7pervent Ventures, says that the VC invested in Orangewood Labs because it has “an indomitable passion to democratise the use of robotics”.
Scott says, “When we think of robotics today, we think of cars being manufactured or home vacuum cleaners. But AI is bringing us to the verge of a step change in how useful—and how many—robots live alongside us. Orangewood is powering this revolution with their robots, which are super easy to use and ultra affordable."
Competing with companies like Systemantics India and GreyOrange, the founder says the startup differentiates with its natural language robot programming via RoboGPT (no coding required), high-precision robotics at accessible prices, physical demos over PowerPoint presentations, and multi-market mastery.
“As a Made-in-India company for global markets, we're not just competing on cost; we're innovating on capability, democratising automation for businesses of every size,” Bhatia says.