Robotics Startup Miko raises INR 23 Cr From Stride Ventures, Angel Investors

Robotics startup Miko, which develops educational and recreational robot toys for children has raised  INR 23 Cr in a pre-series B round led by Stride Ventures. Existing investors including Chiratae Ventures, YourNest Venture Capital and a group of angel investors, led by former Nasscom chairman Keshav Murugesh, participated in the round.

This infusion comes after the startup had raised INR 15.98 Cr from investors such as WNS group CEO and NASSCOM’s chairman Keshav Rurugesh, Inderjit Kaur Arora, Suresh Subramani, Giridhar Sanjeevi and a few others last year.

In August 2019, the startup had also raised INR 53.42 Cr in Series A funding led by Chiratae Ventures. YourNest Venture Capital, investor Bruno Raschle and a group of angel investors also participated in the round. The first tranche of this came in July worth INR 18.58 Cr. 

Miko was founded in 2015 by IIT Bombay graduates Sneh Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar and Chintan Raikar and currently has 120 employees in the US and India. Their vision was to create emotionally intelligent solutions to solve unmet needs using artificial intelligence, robotics and Internet of Things (IoT).

The company’s Miko 2 robot can hear, sense, speak, and has the capacity to remember names, identify moods, recognise faces, and initiate conversations. As it is built on AI and machine learning, the robot also learns from its interactions with the user. 

Miko competes with the likes of Bengaluru-based gaming company Playshifu, which recently raised $7 Mn in Series A funding led by Chiratae, Inventus Capital and Bharat Innovation Fund (BIF).

“Our growth journey till Miko 2 was about creating a product that meets the needs of today’s parents who seek a positive and trusted gateway of technology. Miko 2 has now evolved into a powerful content subscription platform with global content alliances. We are on track to surpass the 100,000-user mark in the coming quarters with Miko,” said Sneh R Vaswani, cofounder and CEO, Miko.

In terms of user base, Miko claims it has expanded across 90 countries, including the US. It claims to have seen a 20% month-on-month growth in engagement during the pandemic. It now has over 70 Mn interactions on its platform.

The company’s filings for FY 2017-18 showed that it incurred expenses of INR 2.34 Cr to generate revenues of INR 1.48 Cr.

According to a report on the “Educational Robot Market by Component (Hardware and Software), Type (Humanoid and Non-Humanoid), Education Level (Elementary and High School Education, Higher Education, and Special Education), and Geography – Global Forecast to 2023”, the educational robot market is valued at $778.6 Mn in 2018 and is expected to reach $1,689.2 Mn by 2023, at a CAGR of 16.8% between 2018 and 2023.