Sharechat Cofounders Raise $3 Mn For Their Robotics Startup General Autonomy

Sharechat cofounders Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh have raised $3 Mn in seed funding from venture capital firms India Quotient, and Elevation Capital for their robotics startup General Autonomy.

Zetwerk cofounder Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Livspace cofounder Ramakant Sharma and ShareChat cofounder Ankush Sachdeva, also participated in this round of funding. The news comes almost 11 months after they stepped down from their executive roles at the social media unicorn.

Before leaving ShareChat, Singh, as a cofounder, also served as the CTO, while Ahsan, in addition to being a cofounder, held the COO role. The third ShareChat founder Ankush Sachdeva continues to be the CEO of the social media unicorn.

Last month, Inc42 exclusively reported about Ahsan and Singh’s new venture in the robotics space.

“Our mission is to revolutionise the future of factories! Factories are complex puzzles, and automation is the key to seeing the full picture, leading to safer, [more] efficient, and standardised production… With a vision to make mass manufacturing agile and distributed like software development, we’re in Bengaluru but working globally,” Fareed Ahsan posted on X.

Singh and Ahsan incorporated General Autonomy Private Limited on May 10, 2023, as per Ministry Of Corporate Affairs (MCA) records. The company is registered in Bengaluru with a paid-up capital of INR 1 Lakh. 

The term ‘general autonomy’ is a concept in robotics that deals with the automation of equipment across use cases. It is particularly relevant in the case of industrial equipment.

“Join us on this thrilling journey as we build AI-driven machines to automate the toughest parts of labour workflows in factories,” added Ahsan.

The duo’s fundraise comes as many second-time founders look at new opportunities after quitting their previous ventures. This year alone, the likes of Teachmint cofounder and former CTO Anshuman Kumar and GoMechanic’s Rishabh Karwa look to start afresh after their previous ventures went awry.

The past few years have seen examples such as Kunal Shah (Freecharge to CRED) and Jitendra Gupta (Citrus Pay to Jupiter), Anant Goel (Milkbasket to Sorted) and Ankit Bhati (Ola to Amnic) and each of these founders raised funding quite quickly for their new ventures.

This is a trend that is also visible across senior executives from major startups quitting to look for pastures anew. For instance, the likes of Paytm, Zoho and Flipkart have dozens of executives moving on to entrepreneurial ventures and raising significant funding while doing so.