My guests today are Murari Ramkumar and Dr. Nagesh Kini, founders of Vimano, a deep-tech startup headquartered in Bengaluru, India, specializing in advanced nanotechnology and materials science.

The company focuses on developing ion-conductive membranes that are critical components for energy transition applications, including Redox flow batteries, electrolyzers for green hydrogen production and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells.

These technologies are essential for enabling cost-effective, long-duration energy storage and supporting the global shift toward renewable energy systems.

In this conversation, Murari and Dr. Nagesh give us a glimpse into their journey that started with a chance encounter at Thermax and has grown to a venture-funded membrane technologies startup, with early customers including the Indian Space Research Organisation. They are now backed by early-stage deep science and tech focused investor Ankur Capital, a VC firm that’s among the leaders in backing founders in India in sectors ranging from agri and biotech to B2B supply chain.

In this episode, the two entrepreneurs also delve into some of the technical and entrepreneurial hurdles of building a deep-tech startup in India, from fashioning their own manufacturing tools to navigating the funding landscape and scaling up in a resource-constrained environment. In fact, Murari and Dr. Nagesh bootstrapped Vimano for five years before Ankur Capital led their first institutional funding round.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a scientist, or simply curious about the future of deep tech in India, in this episode we offer a glimpse into a journey of turning lab-scale innovation into globally relevant products and solutions.

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My guest today is Kunal Khattar, founding managing partner at AdvantEdge Founders, an early-stage VC firm in New Delhi that’s well known for backing founders in the EV and mobility sectors in India. Kunal is well known for backing both consumer facing shared mobility ventures like Rapido and technology-led product innovation startups like Exponent Energy, which is a leader in fast-charging tech in India.

It's now 10 years since AdvantEdge was founded, Kunal says, and the firm is very close to announcing the first close of its third fund, which will likely be in the ballpark of $75 million, to back the next generation of EV entrepreneurs in India.

In this conversation, Kunal talks about why he expects the EV space to hit the J-curve growth stage over the next three to five years and how replacing the overall ICE economy in India is a trillion-dollar opportunity.

Kunal also talks about how because technology-led industry shifts can take decades, some promising technologies, like green hydrogen, for example, will take time to become mainstream.

My guest today is Saurabh Chandra, co-founder and CEO of Ati Motors, an autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) venture in Bengaluru. In this conversation, Saurabh talks about how the robots are coming – changing the industrial manufacturing landscape forever.

He talks about Ati’s own family of robots, named Sherpa, some early engineering decisions that have stood the company in good stead, and how Ati can go from shipping hundreds of robots to thousands, and more. We also briefly touched upon lessons from building a deep tech robotics company out of India.

Under Chandra’s leadership, Ati Motors has become a pioneer in developing AMRs for material movement in factories and warehouses. Unlike traditional automated guided vehicles (AGVs), Ati’s Sherpa robots are engineered to perform in the most challenging industrial environments — handling gradients, potholes, clutter, and even outdoor conditions.

This is made possible by a full-stack, first-principles approach and the use of advanced 3D LiDAR-based navigation, which allows Sherpa robots, today best known for their tugging capabilities, to operate without any external markers, reflectors, or teleoperation. All autonomy is processed onboard, ensuring robust performance even in environments with unreliable connectivity.

Ati’s current portfolio of AMRs include the Sherpa Tug, Sherpa Lifter, Sherpa Pallet Mover, and Sherpa Pivot. The company has some 50 customers in India, Southeast Asia and North America, Chandra says, including names such as Forvia and Hyundai.

On building AMRs out of India, Chandra credits Bengaluru’s multidisciplinary talent pool and thriving manufacturing ecosystem as important advantages that support innovation. The day isn’t that far away when, in factories and warehouses and other such complexes, “whatever moves is going to be autonomous,” he says.

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https://atimotors.com

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