<div>Robots have becomes a familiar site in factories. While at present they are machines that perform tasks for which they are programmed, eventually we intend robots to be self-learning machines that study patterns and causes and make their own decisions. This is what a few startups from India are trying to achieve and their robots can not only make their own decisions, but their software can also be updated remotely, are easy to use and ten time more cost effective than a robot supplied by the large companies. Startups like Grey Orange Robotics, GridBots, Omnipresent Robotics, Gade Systems and Systemantics have kick-started the robot revolution to rescue Indian manufacturing.</div><div> </div><div>If you just take the Indian automobile industry, as an example, the annual wage payout by large OEMs is around $3.5 billion or 10 per cent of the total revenues of the industry. This payout is growing and is marred by continous demonstrations to raise the wages for shop-floor workers. Many a time, the product quality standards are found wanting and this needs immediate correction. If India has to manufacture for the world then robots need to be deployed on a large scale. In two years, these startups would have inspired several other start-ups to build thinking machines. Sometimes there is a feeling that there are very few parallels between drones and robots. But there are differences and these robots matter to us. One would think in an industrial world dominated by a Denso, Siemens & Kuka, start-ups don’t seem to stand a chance. But the opportunity is large and predicted to be $1.5 trillion, in annual spends, by 2020, according to Gartner. The current spends are $800 billion. It is large enough market to make a dent, even today, and these young entrepreneurs are here just to do that.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Robots To The Rescue</strong></div><div>Gridbots and GreyOrange Robotics are trying to achieve “singularity”, which basically means that machine intelligence will far exceed human intelligence. “Singularity will happen in 40 years. But before that a robot or a machine has to be a butler and solve problems that exist in factories,” says Samay Kohli, co-founder of Grey Orange Robotics in Delhi. The trigger of plunging in to robotics for Kohli and Akash Gupta, the co-founder, was their fondness for creating thinking machines and being science fiction buffs. It was obvious that they would try their hand at making robots from a young age and the passion actually took seed in their alma-mater, BITS Pilani in 2008. Their machines were recognized at the Robo Olympics for winning the Kung Fu championship and they also participated in a Robo Cup Soccer tournament. “These competitions, held every year, want us to build robots that can one day beat a human sports team,” says Kohli. Meanwhile his education helped him visit Virginia Tech and the University of Louisiana, in the USA, to study robotics. At the time of graduating, in 2010, college they founded the company in pursuit of making affordable robots for factories. </div><div> </div><div>They decided to differentiate and focus on a few sectors such as retail. The low hanging fruit was the grading and sorting of material in an ecommerce company or a warehouse or logistics company. Their argument for entering the segment was simple; “large industrial organizations are often sold versions of robots whose software cannot be updated for ten years and these systems need an entire IT system to manage them”, says Kohli. Being expensive, industrial robots do not make sense to several industries in agriculture, basic packaging and poly-pack material handling. Currently, industrial robots handle heavy equipment and commercial robots can handle only boxed items in warehouses. The idea of Grey Orange Robotics found its sweet spot. The team began building their bots for handling poly-packs, which immensely benefitted Indian courier and logistics system. They received angel funding of $1 million by the end of their first year and began approaching Flipkart and Myntra, ecommerce giants, to use their bots to sort material. </div><div> </div><div>Now the e-commerce industry has been using over 30 odd bots delivered by Grey Orange. What these machines do is that they are like a radio controlled car, but much more complex in tech, that goes around the warehouse and brings the item to the shipper. Then another product takes over where it sorts the items based on orders placed or cancelled. These robots can sort 500 items, per hour, while an average human can do about 300 items a day. This was the cost saving that they bought to the table of these companies that were dependent on logistics software to make the consumer happy. Also the company’s robots do not need onsite servers; any update of the software is done remotely. Sanjay Nath, founder of Blume Ventures, and one of the angel investors in the company, says “Indian startups, in the engineering segment, have huge potential to solve industrial problems. The number of startups will increase with the make in India campaigns being run by the government.”</div><div> </div><div>This year Tiger Global, the US based fund, invested an undisclosed amount, sources say about $8 million, in Grey Orange because the company could scale up to meet growing orders in the A-Pac region. The materials for the robots come from six countries. The precision parts and gear box comes from Germany, the chipsets and advanced electronics come from the USA and Italy. Today 70 odd engineers build these bots in Singapore and they are 6 times cheaper than robots provided by larger companies, which basically charge not less than $ 1 million.</div><div> </div><table width="300" border="0" align="right" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td><img src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=1e07196e-5ab6-4a82-8741-035b6f913f9f&groupId=36166&t=1427702812551" width="300" height="374" vspace="1" hspace="1" align="right" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Pulkit Gaur, Gridbots</strong></td></tr></tbody></table><div>While Samay and Akash solve problems for warehouses, Gridbots, an Ahmedabad based start-up, is trying to solve hazardous and dangerous problems faced by scientists in nuclear plants. Their robots dispose nuclear tubes or rods and nuclear waste. Pulkit Gaur, who founded GridBots, worked in a software company for three years before plunging full time in to building robots. While pursuing his software career he realized his passion for building software, for machine learning, and also building machines that could minimize human intervention. In 2010, he showcased a robot that could clean radioactive tanks, which garnered great interest and he was immediately contracted by government agencies to build robots for them. NTPC and the Bhaba Automatic Research Centre contacted the company to supply bots that could dispose nuclear tubes in to steel tanks with heavy water. It is difficult for an engineering startup to keep the money flowing because the timeline to deliver a product and receiving the payment takes months. Pulkit and team created a consulting arm to work with any company looking to set up robots in their facility. “Soon efficiency will need to be created in Indian manufacturing and many companies will adopt robots,” says Gaur. He is now scouting for opportunities in the food processing industry and automobile paint shops. Today 95 percent of GridBots work is done for the government of India. The business model for Grid Robots is to charge per robot deployed, which also includes an annual maintenance fee and software upgrade. </div><div> </div><div>A couple of months ago the Tata Power plant in Mundra had a unique problem because a 2-feet long wooden log had jammed one of the steam pipes. This had led to one of the five turbines, of 800 MW, to be temporarily shut down and the plant was incurring a loss of Rs 2 crore per day. Gridbots, was called in to bring their 150 mm (width&height) stringer robot to retrieve the wooden log and relieve the steel pipes in a matter of two days. After a grueling 36-hour operation, the robot was able to pull the ‘block’ out of the pipes. This start-up is currently self funded and it has sunk in more than Rs 2 crore. The good news is that it is finally preparing a plan to raise $4 million to invest in a R&D centre. However, talent is a problem. Pulkit Gaur has also created an education company, which teaches only robotics. The company called Edubotix sets up labs across the country’s colleges and schools. </div><div> </div><table width="300" border="0" align="left" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td><img src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=f7e63b11-bac6-40fa-8f3c-32ea97123421&groupId=36166&t=1427704918481" width="300" height="199" vspace="1" hspace="1" align="middle" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Gagan Goyal, ThinkLabs (BW Pic by Shubhabrata Das</strong></td></tr></tbody></table><div>Similar to Edubotix is another company called Thinklabs, which was started by ex-IITian Gagan Goyal in 2007. His company has set up robotics labs in 90 cities and has also trained teachers in robotics. It has been funded by Seed Ventures and has raised $1.2 million. “Today there is a need to inculcate robotics education from a young age; this is the only way India can tap talent to make robots in ten years,” says Goyal, founder of ThinkLabs. The company supplies smart kits, mostly Arduino boards along with 8 Bit microcontrollers, to school students and allows them to innovate based on logic. There are some who want to take their learning from University and the Corporate world to build robots and they are already readying themselves for a major push in manufacturing. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Robots Assistants</strong></div><div>Omnipresent Robots, founded in 2010 in Delhi, is one such company that has been in R&D stage for a while. Aakash Sinha, who studied robotics at Carnegie Mellon in 2003, moved back to India- in 2007- to set up the office of US based robotics company iRobot. A couple of years later Sinha, a veteran of building 3000 robots and robo-tanks back in the USA, realized that India had a unique set of use cases. That is when he jumped in to start his own company. “Everyone is catching on to the made in India campaign now. But our robots were being made four years ago and can be used at homes,” says Sinha. They started with pilot program and created a bomb disposal robot which was later accepted by the DRDO, at Delhi, in 2011. After a few years, one filled with iterations, along with the government agency, the company realized that robots can be used at homes too, say to clean and vacuum. They are now scouting for $2 million to scale up their business plan and operations. </div><div> </div><div>The whacky ideas don’t stop there. Others are thinking of applications in retail shops. Founded in 2012, Gade Systems – started by Sasi Kiran Gade – is trying to make the Corporate world accept robots differently. “Imagine robots helping you in the trial room or giving the consumer the store’s perspective on the product,” says Gade. It is not easy though because he is yet to create a business model. However for the moment he is hard at work to build several applications that can make the robot work for any given task. He has personally, through family sources, invested $70,000 and is in the process of raising $1 million by the middle of 2015. Today his product “the shopping assistant” is ready to be commercialized and is completely localized. Similar to Gade Systems is Systemantics, which was also funded by Blume Ventures in 2014, and the company had built a robot arm for industrial use with the help of the Department of Science and Technology. </div><div> </div><div>Robotics, as an industry, is still a nascent subject in the country and most of the robots are only programmed for limited operations. Visit a Tata Motors plant in Pune and you will find that robotics is playing a major role in the manufacturing industry, especially in welding, material handling, sealant applications, painting, foundry applications and automated press shops. They bring consistency in quality of the outcome. “There is significant amount of reduction in fatigue and safety risks. The applications are cost effective only in the areas mentioned above and one cannot provide a ratio at a manpower level,” says Girish Wagh, Vice President at Tata Motors. Similarly walk in to the Hyundai factory in Chennai and you will find that robots have been deployed for difficult jobs. “Our efforts are to harness human intelligence and use automation in areas where the jobs need high precision, which cannot be achieved even with a highly skilled worker,” says T Sarangarajan, VP Product at Hyundai Motors India Limited. He says that Robots can be used in some things which involve the 3Ds– “dirty, difficult and dangerous processes” or “where work could pose a health related risk”.</div><div> </div><div>For example, in the body shop, robots are used for high precision welding. Welding is difficult, dirty and accident prone task. The weight of the welding gun can at times go beyond 10 kgs and using robots minimizes the exposure of the worker to such hazards and ensuring precise welding. This culminates into greater stability for the end product. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle 2013 machines are becoming better at understanding humans and the environment — for example, recognizing the emotion in a person's voice — and humans are becoming better at understanding machines — for example, through the Internet of things. At the same time, machines and humans are getting smarter by working together. The pet peeve, of analysts, is to say that “smart” everything is the future of business. We must keep in mind that it is not in plain coding or services; it is creating an architecture or framework for digital services. </div><div> </div><div>The problem though does not stop there, the R&D spend in India is less than 2 per cent in manufacturing, because most of the R&D is happening at the global headquarters of MNCs. Maybe Indian manufacturing companies need the capital, in the form of loans and equity investment, to build or buy robots, which will be operated by human beings. Then and only then will the made in India campaign win in the long run.</div><div> </div><div> </div>
