Mumbai-Based Robotics Startup emotix Raises $2 Million From IDG Ventures And YourNest

Mumbai-based robotics startup emotix has raised $2 million in a latest funding round led by IDG Ventures India and YourNest. emotix is famous for creating India's first personal educational and entertainment-based robot companion for children. According to a financial newspaper, emotix will use the funds for new product development and research in areas like emotional and artificial intelligence. emotix's key product Miko is a robot created for kids above five years of age was developed over a period of two-and-a-half years after over 20 pilot testing projects. Now, the company is targeting sales of over 1,00,000 units by 2021 in India. The company was founded in October 2014 by three IIT-Bombay post-graduates, and is today driven by a 20-member team of roboticists, academicians, and neuropsychologists. Sneh Rajkumar Vaswani, co-founder and CEO at emotix said in a press statement, "The recent investment from funds advised by IDG Ventures India and YourNest is a great validation of efforts by the team. Besides a consistent growth rate in sales, we surpass some of the best AI conversational stacks globally by clocking 37 times the average session duration with our user as compared to industry peers." https://youtu.be/9djMZNaUzAM The robot, which follows voice-based commands, responds and learns about a child to guide their interactions. Miko's 'Classroom' set up lets a child have detailed and guided discussions with about their topics of interest. Among other interesting capabilities, Miko comes loaded with parental control and safety. The parents can also monitor and control the relationship between Miko and the child through a separate analytics dashboard interface. Sudhir Sethi, founder and managing general partner at IDG Ventures India, said in the press statement, "In our view, emotixTM is poised to record stellar growth. emotixTM has identified a huge market and created a niche through its pipeline of unique offerings based on cutting edge innovation in robotics, artificial intelligence and psychology. It’s not only a seamless demonstration of filling gaps in the life of the consumer but also an attempt to revolutionise man-machine interaction. These considerations and the attractive growth potential excited us to invest in emotixTM."