Bengaluru-based AI startup Netradyne has secured around INR 58 crores from Reliance Industries with an exchange of 37.4 per cent stake. The startup has bases in Bengaluru and San Diego. The capital was infused by Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings, the investment arm of Reliance Industries. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries subscribed to 40,58,647 shares of Netradyne.
Reliance Industries Limited has plans to expand its digital services and communications and the recent investment is a result of its potential synergies of scaling up. Founded by Avneesh Agrawal and David Julian in 2016, Netradyne leverages artificial intelligence, deep learning and Internet of Things to deliver smart solutions for domains like fleet management, security, automotive, and surveillance.
Netradyne provides an AI platform combined with deep learning computer vision for detection, reasoning and determination of casualty of events providing corporates with meaningful data and information. Driveri, a vision based driver recognition system developed by Netradyne, enhances the safety of truck drivers.
In June 2016, Netradyne raised $16 million from Reliance Industries. According to RIL, the Bengaluru-based startup started commercialising the tech capabilities by partnering up with selected corporates all around the world.
There are major AI players in the Indian startup ecosystem including Active.ai, Niki.ai, SigTuple, Staqu, Playment, Unbxd and Intello Labs. Earlier this month, SenseHawk raised around INR 14 crores in series A funding from SAIF Partners. Also, Mate Labs raised $550,000 from Omphalos Ventures earlier this month.
“AI is like the new electricity. The new factor of production. Like the industrial revolution, it will transform every sector. We want to exploit it to solve big socio-economic challenges that India faces,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.
From crop management to fighting terrorism, there’s a plan to deploy AI in 10 sectors in Asia’s third-largest economy. Those include manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, education and public utilities. Artificial intelligence can make you rich in the upcoming years. With implementations like transforming logistics, transportation and supply chain, helping the fintech sector process micro-credits by determining the creditworthiness of customers, and determining e-commerce trends AI-industry is still in the second gear.
Just as Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon are battling to serve the cloud computing and machine learning needs of the US government, the next three to five years may lead to a similar dynamic within India. As the Indian government pushes for digitization and enacts more AI initiatives, private firms will flock to win big contracts – adding to the pool of funds to develop new technologies and spin out new AI and data science-related startups.
