Windrose Capital backs the maker of the Robot that greeted PM Modi&Ivanka Trump

20th January 2020: Pune based Venture Capital Firm, Windrose Capital and Mumbai based ITI Growth Fund have invested in an INR 2 crore seed round of Invento Makerspaces, the company building the ‘Mitra’ robot which greeted Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi and daughter of US President, Ms. Ivanka Trump at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 at Hyderabad. The round also saw participation from a few other domain investors.

‘Mitra’ which means friend, is a Humanoid Robot helping various brands across sectors to improve their physical customer experience and access. Currently, the Mitra Robot is deployed in varying capacities with about 50 different companies such as HDFC, Accenture, Suzuki, Morris Garages, General Motors, Zomato, PVR and many more from different industries. Being run by technology entrepreneurs, Windrose Capital believes it can understand the technology start-up lifecycle well and will be able to add value beyond capital. Rohit Goyal, Managing Partner of Windrose Capital said, “Companies like Invento which practice a culture of innovation, will spearhead India’s economic transformation. Invento is a pioneer of commercial and economically viable Humanoid Robotics in India, and, its product ‘Mitra’ will be a game changer in the way big brands interact and service their clients.”

Invento Makerspaces was founded by Balaji Viswanathan in Bangalore along with 2 co-founders with extensive experience in robotics, consulting, R&D and management. The ‘Mitra 2’ was launched by PM Modi at GES 2017 and the more advanced ‘Mitra 3’ was recently unveiled this year at the World renowned Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The robot is designed to interact with humans using facial and speech recognition contextual help and autonomous navigation. It is capable of seamless autonomous movement and obstacle detection, along with speech synthesis in regional Asian languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Sinhalese.The company is looking to launch subsequent variants of robots for applications in different industries and operating verticals.

Sharing his views on the investment Mr.Balaji Viswanathan, Founder of Invento Makerspaces said, “We had excellent conversations with the Investors — MohitGulati from ITI Capital, RohitGoyal from Windrose Capital, Kevin Saboo (an angel investor) and Vikash Sharma from IC 1101. Even in the initial conversations, the investors showed a deeper understanding of our business and were providing specific recommendations on scaling up. It is very essential that start-ups of our size not only look for money, but also the right expertise and connections from the prospective investors. We are lucky to have found the right grouping”

The company is planning to use the funded amount for Research & Development in building and innovating new Robot variants, Business Expansion into new industries & verticals.

Windrose Capital decided to back Invento and its founders in their initial round after looking at the potential value the company unleashes for its clients. Through the Mitra robot, companies will be able to engage many more consumers efficiently. The upcoming variants would also enable the robotizing of manufacturing operations, HR processes and other roles in various industries. This will not only lead to swelling top lines but also rapidly growing bottom lines. “Invento has officially brought the dawn of the autonomous age in India and we are excited to be a part of their journey. It’s thrilling for us to see how quickly, banks, event management companies, hotels, malls, airports, cinema halls and hospitals are befriending this robot”, Goyal added.

About Windrose Capital

Founded in 2014 by digital natives who have been founders themselves, Windrose Capital manages the ‘The Next Billion Fund’, a SEBI registered Cat- 1 AIF/ Venture Capital Fund. It’s led by active investors, thoughtful advisors, and dedicated problem solvers who have a passion for technology and a deep belief in the transformative power of digital-first businesses. The VC firm aims to create capital value by harnessing disruptive efficiency-driven opportunities in the Indian Start-up space. They pride in being a VC that gets investee companies to the proven market level, customer value and unit profitability by providing a support ecosystem to grow from a successful product to a proven business at scale.

About InventoMakerspaces

Invento Makerspaces Private Limited is a Private incorporated on 17 November 2016. It is classified as Non-govt company and is registered at Registrar of Companies, Bangalore. They build service robots for banks, malls and events. Our flagship product – Mitra – comes with 3 key abilities: home grown contextualized speech recognition algorithm that works offline, face recognition and navigation indoors.

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