Swaayatt Robots, an Indian AI and robotics startup, has secured $4 million to advance to Level 5 Autonomy

At a $175 million value, the business plans to raise an additional $7 million.

Indian AI and robotics firm Swaayatt Robotics, located in Bhopal, has secured $4 million from US investors at a $151 million valuation. A further $11 million will be raised by the firm, which is valued between $175 and $200 million.

We only used $650,000 of the $3 million we collected in 2021. Thus, we now have $6.3 million in total to continue our study. We currently operate in urban areas, on roads, and in off-road terrain," Swaayatt Robots head Sanjeev Sharma said in a special interview with AIM.

We want to develop a design by the end of the year that might resolve Level Four Autonomy on a worldwide scale. We could need to fund around $1.5 billion to scale that concept, according to Sharma.

Global investors invested a record $9.7 billion in the development of driverless vehicles in 2021. But, at barely $4.1 billion, that sum decreased by over 60% the previous year. A McKinsey analysis states that self-driving cars are the way of the future and that by 2035, they would provide a $300 billion to $400 billion revenue potential.

The firm is organizing a significant demo for August, Sharma said. "I don't know what will excite Sam Altman and Elon Musk along with the rest of the world if the August demo doesn't," he said. In a demonstration earlier this year, the business said that it had attained Level 5 Autonomy.

Although autonomous driving is still in its infancy in India, a number of firms, including Minus Zero, Flowdrive, Flux Auto, and Netradyne, are actively developing self-driving technology tailored to the nation's unpredictable road conditions. 

In a recent demonstration, Swaayatt Robots' autonomous car avoided dirt and rock piles that had been deposited on the road for construction. 

In the Western autonomous driving business, navigating a construction site with well-organized traffic cones is usually seen as a difficult task. "You will notice that our vehicle made a 90-degree turn at an unmanaged intersection," Sharma said, emphasizing how problematic the situation is for businesses of all sizes, including Waymo and Tesla. 

The business allowed self-driving cars to manage two-way traffic on single-lane highways in October of last year. 44 km/h was the relative speed at which the demo was carried out. "This research and development will now be expanded to a level where it will be possible to sustain a relative velocity of sixty kilometers per hour at the crossing point," said Sharma.

Prioritize R&D for Autonomous Driving 

Swaayatt Robots has been performing demonstrations with Mahindra Bolero and hasn't actually marketed their technology to anybody as of now. But going forward, the business will concentrate on OEM integration in already-built cars, with a particular eye on the military and autonomous trucking markets. 

"We cannot expect new vehicles to be maintained in service for autonomous driving markets in the military domain; instead, you would want to develop a system that can be patched into these aftermarket vehicles," Sharma said. 

He continued by saying that North America has enormous aftermarket markets for autonomous trucks. "If you look at the US trucking market, it's an addressable market worth $800 billion," Sharma said. He said that certain US fleet owners had been in contact with Swaayatt Robots.

"We have understood what is needed of almost every single OEM in the country," he remarked in reference to India. With the exception of Mahindra, we communicate with the majority of OEMs in India. Ironically, Anand Mahindra just gave us a compliment. 

He clarified that Mahindra's cars are the most easily modifiable and sturdy, despite the fact that we do not have direct contact with the company. "This Mobileye system from Mahindra is built into the XUV700."

Superior than Tesla?  

Sharma tries to portray Swaayatt as an R&D firm that does not yet have any plans to sell automobiles, unlike Tesla. "To enable autonomous driving, we are conducting highly advanced research and development in the field of general autonomous navigation," he said. 

He claimed that in the October 2023 demo, their car successfully handled bi-directional traffic on a single lane. "There is no authority on the planet that is working on bi-directional traffic," he stated, citing both Musk's Tesla and Altman's OpenAI. 

Only four to five autonomous driving firms will remain by 2030, he said, underscoring the enormous R&D obstacles involved. He emphasized that the issue of safety must be taken seriously. He brought up the GM Cruise incident, pointing out that it prompted many probes and a complete shutdown of operations.

 Sharma is one of Wavye AI's biggest fans. With the release of Wavye AI in 2019, people have started talking about autonomy without using maps. We were the first to develop technology that allowed cars to operate without using high-definition maps. We deployed multi-RL agents in 2017 without the need for any maps," he said. 

"We are developing self-supervised models for these challenges as well. We have done R&D in the perception domain to such an extent that there are now only 5 problems where supervised teaching is required," he said.

The firm has only used Mahindra Bolero for demonstrations up to this point. The business intends to show using a number of cars, including Fortuner and Thar, in the near future. "Thar as well as Bolero will cross each other in an autonomous fashion in one of our demos," Sharma said in closing.