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Robotics firm wins start-up prize worth Rs2 crore

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and chip-maker Qualcomm Inc, through its venture arm Qualcomm Ventures, announced Arkrobot as the winner of the 'QPrize Make in India' contest, worth $3,50,000 (approximately Rs2 crore) in equity funding.

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Rajesh Manpat
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Bangalore-based start-up Arkrobot — a warehouse automation company that manufactures robots for smart logistics — has won a high-value start-up contest held during the Make in India Week in Mumbai, thus bagging Rs2 crore.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and chip-maker Qualcomm Inc, through its venture arm Qualcomm Ventures, announced Arkrobot as the winner of the 'QPrize Make in India' contest, worth $3,50,000 (approximately Rs2 crore) in equity funding.

But the brain behind the nine-year-old start-up is neither an engineer nor a formally-trained student. Instead, Arkrobot was conceived of by 31-year-old Rajesh Manpat, a former national rifle shooting champion who studied for a Bachelors in Computer Science degree through correspondence.

Speaking to dna soon after winning the award, Manpat said, "With the Rs2-crore equity funding, I can now focus on robots on a larger scale and have a bigger team to work with." Manpat has a team of 15 people who put together a series of automation robots as well as a rifle scoring system, which has a niche global market. "The rifle scoring system was the first product that I started making in 2008. We are now selling it globally," Manpat said.

Asked for the reason why he thought his start-up had won the contest, Manpat said, "I think I was able to understand the need of the day and pinpoint the problems of my customers. E-retailers work on little margins. Hence, efficiency is crucial for their sustainability. We were able to design cutting-edge warehouse robots or mobile-arm robots."

His robots are armed with artificial intelligence, swarm intelligence and machine-system vision. They can work at a speed of 4km/hr and can lift 250kg, all with an accuracy of 0.6mm. The low-cost robots need little maintenance and are governed by servers.

'QPrize Make in India' was judged by a panel of top industrialists. Among the 500 entries for the contest, the finalists were Cardiac Design Labs (advanced and affordable cardiac diagnostics), NexGear Technology (Frodo-Intelligent Strap-on Adventure Camera, which automatically edits hours of raw footage), Flight Data Labs (drone data analytics solutions for solar energy) and Threye Interactive (robots for space). The contest was launched across India ahead of the Make in India Mumbai week to pinpoint the best start-up and support it with venture capital.

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