Building a Robotics Company from India: Ritukar Vijay CEO of Ottonomy (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the use case for Cincinnati Airport?

Ritukar Vijay: To deliver goods. After the security check-in, there are gate-hugger personas. There are people who just fly off after the departure gate. We are not participating in any of the retail activities at the airport. 2020 was a time when the aviation industry was having a bad time. It was a nightmare.

They started looking at ways to engage people in more economic activities focusing on the non-aeronautical revenue. The airport came together to solve that problem. We did the first pilot in December 2020.

Sramana Mitra: To do what?

Ritukar Vijay: To do deliveries of food and beverages and travel retail to the departure gate. After the security check, you can move to the departure gate and just order online. The robot will reach you at the departure gate.

With this idea, there were two things that were happening. One was more economic activities. You stand in a queue to order something. Then you wait for your order. Once you get it, you either have it there or walk towards the departure gate. In this whole process, only 30% to 40% participate and 60% walk by. We were trying to target that segment.

Sramana Mitra: How did you come up with this use case? Who pointed you to this?

Ritukar Vijay: As I said, airports were looking at innovative ways to focus on non-aeronautical revenue.

Sramana Mitra: How did the interaction happen?

Ritukar Vijay: We had this product and we had an organic reach out from the airport. There were tons of robotics delivery companies in the US at that time but none of these were navigating indoors. They were reliant on GPS. They were getting tele-operated in outdoor areas. All the warehousing robots were not made to navigate in dynamic environments.

That was a sweet spot. Fortunately, we were doing something that nobody else were doing. We did a pilot with them to prove that things work. It did work. We did a one-month pilot. We got a very positive feedback, but a lot of inputs were from usability. It was an MVP at that time. We came back. We raised funds from angel investors showing progress. It took almost six to eight months to transform that MVP into a deployable product.

Sramana Mitra: Who were your investors?

Ritukar Vijay: We started raising capital on safe. Our first investor was a law firm based out of Silicon Valley – Anil Advani from Inventus Law. He was the first guy to say, “Do you want to set up an entity in the US?” He was the first to invest. Then came in angels from Netherlands and Singapore within our network.

Sramana Mitra: This is not an institutional round. It’s more of friends and family round.

Ritukar Vijay: Yes, but not so much family.

Sramana Mitra: These were people who knew you basically.

Ritukar Vijay: Yes. During the course of doing that, one of the investors who came in was Kinetic Ventures. That was because we were in Cincinnati and doing the airport pilot. Kinetic Ventures is a micro-VC based out of Cincinnati. A lot of CXOs invested in us. We raised around $1.5 million to keep developing things. Unless we don’t have a deployable product, it’s not advisable to raise an equity round.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a Robotics Company from India: Ritukar Vijay CEO of Ottonomy
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