VECROS, India’s first autonomous, Spatial AI-powered Drone Systems company, raises $250K led by Rebalance
Monitoring and inspection are critical for infrastructure maintenance and can have a direct impact on human lives or public safety. However, monitoring any industrial facility or assessing the condition of critical infrastructure such as pipes, bridges, inaccessible areas or roads can be prone to error and accidents. Companies annually pay millions of dollars in compensation to workers or the government due to workplace-related safety issues.
Deploying intelligent machines like drones offers a substantial leap in operational efficiency, precision, and safety — and can cut costs by half!
Drones are enabling ‘Data on Wings’ for remote, visual inspections and monitoring — saving millions for companies.
Engineers and field workers already use drones for many aspects of utility operations, including power line inspections.
However, current drones are not built for industrial applications — they suffer from inefficiency since every drone requires a pilot; offers poor image quality, no intelligent analysis, and doesn’t offer intelligent navigation.
VECROS has developed India’s First Spatial AI technology for drones. The AI can understand the space, depth, and structure around it to navigate safely. Their flagship product ‘Athera’ is an autonomous drone powered by an in-house proprietary operating system called ‘JetpixTM’.
It was co-founded in 2021 by Besta Prem Sai (IIT-D, 6+ years in aerial robotics; Founded Aero Club IIT Delhi, Worked with Boeing and TCS) and Rajeshree Deotalu (NIT Nagpur, 6+ years in robotics, motion planning and dynamics with 6 published research papers).
“We have developed an entire operating system to launch drones autonomously and operate them without the need for a pilot. We want to empower industries with GPS-independent, AI-on-Edge drones, which can redefine the future of drone operations” said Rajeshree Deotalu, Co-Founder of VECROS.
We’re thrilled to announce our latest investment in VECROS — A pre-seed round of $250K led by Rebalance Angel Community with participation from Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl’s Eternal Capital, Suhail Sameer’s OTP Ventures and TDV Partners.
Their groundbreaking autonomous drone technology is a complete hardware and operating system solution that reduces cost by 70% and offers a 60% reduction in flight time per task.
“We’re leading the drone market with level 4 autonomy right now and are on the path to developing level 5 autonomy. This allows a drone to automatically take off, scan an area, and report insights without any human intervention. Some features we’re excited about include automatic mission scheduling and advanced video management” said Besta Prem Sai, Co-Founder of VECROS.
The drone inspection and monitoring market is expected to reach $30bn by 2026. In fact, for drones, the opportunity in the commercial security sector is of the order of US$1B per year in the coming decade.
“We met Rajeshree through a friend when they were in the initial testing phase. Her passion and the story of what they were building for India was inspiring. We’re excited to see the multifold applications of their technology catering to sectors from construction, energy plants, oil and gas, utilities, large agricultural farms, and railways to civil security and emergency response all offer notable opportunities for autonomous drone-based monitoring and inspection,” said Aishwarya Malhi and Vikas Kumar, Co-founders at Rebalance.
They have filed for 10+ patents and aim to file for several more. VECROS is currently in the process of conducting trials with the Indian army, security, and logistics companies.
VECROS has been recognized by the Indian Army and selected as part of the IDEX program to further develop our autonomous mapping and GPS-Denied solution. They have previously been the winner of the Sterlite Innovation Challenge among 480 startups. VECROS was also part of the Nvidia inception program and Rebalance Accelerator Cohort 06.
“Having worked many years in the energy and mining industry, we could immediately see the power of what VECROS had developed. Drone technology has moved a long way over the last few years. What Besta and Rajeshree are building is pushing the envelope of autonomous monitoring and inspection. We are very excited to work with them and help them take this technology to numerous industries and clients” added Suhail Sameer, Partner at OTP Ventures.
They plan to use the funds for the production, and commercialization of drones and team expansion.
“Vecros aims to make the world of drone-based applications both, operationally applicable and economically viable. By bridging the gap between the complexity of deep-tech and the intricacy of on-ground operations, Rajeshree & Besta are building a scalable and sustainable new-age company and are excited to back them,” commented Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl, partner at Eternal Capital.
Vecros recently featured on Shark Tank India Season 3 and were the first ones to demonstrate GPS-denied drone technology on Indian Television.
You can watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/FH__53bsA2E?si=vhzAjiZEm7bdCtuC
About Rebalance Angel Community:
We’re India’s first angel community that is 51% diverse. We bring together seasoned and aspiring angel investors who understand the importance of backing diverse founding teams, early on.
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Written by Aishwarya Malhi, co-founder at Rebalance.
