Bengaluru, NFAPost: Autonomous technology platform provider Flo Mobility raised $400,000 (Rs 3.04 crore) from DevX Venture Fund, Venture Garage Angels, Blume Founder Fund and unnamed marquee angels to expand its network in India and foray into overseas markets.
“Funding will be used to expand our network across the country and foray into Europe, the US, West Asia and East Asian markets,” said the city-based start-up in a statement here.
The company aims to build a platform for providing autonomous capabilities to make vehicles across industries and form factors.
“We are deploying our stack on a range of vehicles like electric scooters, delivery bots, agri-weeders, surveillance bots, golf carts and lawnmowers,” said the company.
Co-founded in 2019 by Manesh Jain and Mohan Kumar, the company wants to democratise autonomy by building an affordable and interoperable stack that can be retrofitted into present vehicles and equipment.
“The funding will enable us to hire people to form technology, product and engineering teams and do research on vision-based perception, low latency remote operations and proprietary operating system,” said Jain on the occasion.
The co-founders hope platform-centric approach and subscription-based pricing will enable them to build a multi-billion-dollar business.
“As smart solutions for the autonomy-as-a-service are the future and given Flo Mobility’s capabilities, I am confident its offerings will find many takers,” said lead investor DevX co-founder Umesh Uttamchandani in the statement.
DVF anticipates a huge impact on the sector with the game-changing offerings of the company.
“We see a great future in autonomous technologies, which have an estimated market opportunity of $40-50 billion in the coming years. Flo has expertise to build the technology and expand globally,” said Vivek of Venture Garage.
According to Sarita Raichura of Blume venture fund, Manesh and Mohan earlier co-founded Mockbank and sold it to Jio Embibe for an unspecified amount.
“Indian tech ecosystem is showing signs of maturity where companies like Flo Mobility are building for the world in India,” said Raichura.
DVF, which invests in early-stage startups, has invested in 8 firms that are into fintech, SaaS, healthcare, proptech, agritech and deeptech. It is part of DevX Co-working and Accelerator, which provides co-working and managed office space in Gujarat. It was co-founded in 2017 by RUPaiyya trio Rushit, Umesh and Parth and Dev Information Technology Ltd./eom/380 words.
