The number of Mikos purchased in tier 2-3 cities astonishes us: Sneh Rajkumar Vaswani

When three Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai graduates – Sneh Rajkumar Vaswani, Chintan Subhash Raikar and Prashant Iyengar – founded the robotics firm Emotix in 2014, they had a little inkling how it would shape out. Today, Vaswani tells Praveena Sharma that he is crystal clear on where he wants to take the company. Emotix recently raised $2-million funding from IDG Ventures India and YourNest.

What kind of a market is emerging for robotics?

We see India as a billion dollar market for social robotics. This has been validated by the kind of interest institutional investors have shown in our company. We started with door-to-door selling but today, in a matter of six-seven months, we are in 100 stores with Miko sale growing at over 30% month-on-month.

Where is the robot manufactured?

The entire design, development and intellectual property are with our company. Assembling is done by our partner company in China because there are parts and niche components inside Miko which are extremely difficult to find in India. Parts are sourced from all over the world. We do some quality control and software development in India.

How are you pushing Miko in the market?

Today, we are at Croma and Hamley's. We began selling through FirstCry last week. We are already on Amazon and Flipkart. Our product is not a toy nor a gadget so it can be placed in a consumer electronic store like Reliance digital or a Croma and even in toy stores. This gives us the opportunity to engage with our market at more touch points and helps us get a larger footprint. Initially, we were targeting urban markets but the response coming from tier 2-3 cities has been enormous. The number of Mikos purchased in tier 2-3 cities astonishes us. They are on par with the urban cities.

How are the features upgraded?

Software gets upgraded every 24 hours at the server level. Every month, we also add new features, which are free of cost, to Miko to improve its performance. This is done through Over-the-Air (OTA) upgrades.

What are Emotix's expansion plans?

We are basically looking at increasing our retail footprint to 500 stores and quickly reaching 1-lakh-plus-user mark in India. At the same time, we are also targeting markets outside India. We launched our product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That is our first entry point in the US. Very soon, one will find Miko in retail stores in the US.

Can you tell us about your breakeven and fundraising plans?

We were operationally profitable in multiple months in the past few months. In one of the months, we were close to net profitability because our sales were very good. We recently raised $2 million for research and development, to create new products and to enter new markets. Post this round, we have got immense interest in our next round of funding. We are evaluating them. It will primarily be targeted at the development of new products for the future. We already have a 15-year roadmap for new products.

There were also two opportunities for an exit that came to the table from global giants in consumer space but it was too early to give in. Our goal is to make an IPO-friendly company and that is where I want to get to.

How different is the business model of the B2C robot from the B2B robot?

We are a B2C robot company. Our business and scale-up models are completely different. For us, what matters is how many stores our robots are in. How well we do on an e-commerce platform. How many people are buying our products and what are they doing with it. For B2C robot companies, what matters is what their clients want.

What was the idea behind launching your social robot Miko?

Our current society is incomplete and we are completing an incomplete society. We are dabbling with a very unique unmet social expectation of parents. What we are giving them is the most positive and trusted gateway to technology that can cater to the child's learning and development. Miko serves as a perfect option to address the curiosity of children and prepare them for a better life ahead through constant engagement and entertainment.

Our rigorous surveys and user researches to understand the current state of the consumer's mind revealed that 92% of parents dislike their children's addiction to social media and other online platforms. But 80% of parents realise the importance of technology and want some other option of technology that engages, educates and entertains their children. The buyer of my product is parent and user is the child. The product has to engage the child as well as address the concerns of the parents. Our companion robot fits that role perfectly well.