Cautio Acquires BYTES To Provide Safety Solutions For Two-Wheelers

Visual telematics startup Cautio has acquired BYTES, an AI-powered automotive startup that specialises in building advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for two-wheelers, to expand its safety offerings for two-wheelers.

Cautio, which currently provides AI-powered dash cam and operating systems for autos, cabs, buses, logistics fleets, and enterprise mobility, said the acquisition will allow it to build a full-stack road safety platform for all vehicles, especially as two-wheeler safety is usually overlooked.

Without disclosing the acquisition amount, Cautio said that the BYTES team will join the startup’s R&D operations to build safety solutions for two-wheelers.

Cautio plans to double down on its investments in the category to expand research and deploy longer-term engineering resources. It will focus on rider visibility, real-time risk detection, incident documentation and tailored response systems.

Founded in 2023 by Aayush Kumar and Prakhar Agrawal, BYTES leverages its vision-based proprietary AI-powered safety system to provide real-time risk detection and ADAS for two-wheelers.

Bengaluru-based BYTES, which is an acronym for Beyond Your Technological Explorations, was backed by Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath’s WTFund, IIT Mandi Catalyst, NSRCEL- IIM B & Startup Karnataka.

Meanwhile, Cautio, founded in 2023 by Ankit Acharya and Pranjal Nadhan, claims to analyse millions of video kilometres everyday across over 50 cities through its 24×7 command centre, where it generates insights on driver safety and also provides real-time assistance to prevent accidents.

It claims to detect road conditions, along with critical driver behaviour like fatigue, distraction, overspeeding, and collisions. This allows fleets to reduce accidents, improve compliance, and lower insurance and operational costs. It plans to introduce insurance mapping as well by leveraging its growing dataset.

Cautio raised $3 Mn (about INR 26.3 Cr) in its seed round in August this year. It is backed by investors like 8i Ventures, 9Unicorns, Antler India, Venture Catalysts, along with angel investors like CARS24 cofounders Gajendra Jangid and Vikram Chopra, Bounce cofounder Vivekananda Hallekere, Jar cofounder Nishchay AG, among others.

The acquisition comes at a time when the Indian telematics space is growing at a rapid pace and is expected to quadruple to $6.9 Bn by 2033 from $1.7 Bn currently, clocking a CAGR of around 16%. In January this year, Cautio’s competitor Netradyne became a unicorn after raising $90 Mn in its Series D funding round led by existing backer Point72 Private Investments.