The MoU was signed by PN Rasal, Dean(F/A) & Director of Instructions, MPKV university, and Anoop Kumar Upadhyay, Co-Founder & Director of IoTechWorld Avigation.

According to Upadhyay, IoTechWorld and the university will also work on joint educational and R&D projects to build a modern and sustainable smart agricultural system. The agritech firm will be the technical partner in setting up Remote Pilot Training Organization (RPTO) for agricultural drones with MPKV. It will help reduce the drone pilot shortage in the country.

Both will also develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) for crop spraying using drones.

“The tie-up with an institution like MPKV will help us promote research activities promoting drones in agriculture. Together we will work to promote drone technology for the betterment of Indian agriculture,” IoTech World directors Upadhyay and Deepak Bhardwaj said in a joint statement.

Bhardwaj further said that using drones in agriculture is helpful for farmers as these aerial robots help them save money and time.

Another objective of the MoU is to develop a smart agricultural system. IoTechWorld and the university will work on joint educational and R&D projects for the betterment of the agriculture sector. This will increase efficiency, reduce operational field delays, optimise the use of fertilisers and pesticides, and thus help increase farmers’ income.

One of the major advantages is that a farmer can save a lot by using drones to apply fertilisers and spray pesticides.

The Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has issued guidelines to make drone technology affordable to stakeholders. The government has also created SOPs for pesticide applications for crop protection in agricultural, forestry, and non-cropped areas and for spraying for soil and crop nutrients.

As per the government estimate, India will require at least one lakh drone pilots by next year.

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Robotify has a range of products to offer in the Indian market. In 2020, Robotify partnered with an exciting Indian educational robotics company called Avishkaar to develop a virtual Indian Robotics Championship.  More recently, Robotify has partnered with a fast growing education company; eVidyalaya Eductech Systems, to bring Robotify to schools across India.

Adam Dalton, CEO of Robotify on exploring the Indian market says, “Robotify is really excited to expand its user base into the education market in India. It’s our mission to make STEM and robotics more accessible and more affordable for every child around the world. When it comes to teaching students how to code, we aspire to be one of the leading choices for schools across India by 2023.”

The edtech company is also working with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a product called ‘Simbotify’. The contract with ESA will see Robotify provide robotic simulations for businesses in the agriculture, oil and natural resources, large infrastructure, and freight and remote testing sectors using real-time satellite imagery from the Sentinel 1 and 2 satellites that orbit Earth.

Enterprise Ireland helped Robotify understand the Indian education system and made relevant connections in the K-12 space for edtech. Enterprise Ireland also introduced the edtech company to possible partners who could help them make inroads into the Indian and South Asian market.

Abhinav Bhatia, Director of Enterprise Ireland, India and South Asia commented, “The Indian market has witnessed many edtech products being launched in the past few years, with a lot of VC money coming into the startups. More and more jobs will become automated in the coming decades, and our next generation would benefit if they pick up skills like coding and robotics. Robotify makes learning these skills fun and engaging for students. I anticipate the demand for such products will continue to rise in India and South Asia.”

Robotify products are aimed at students and educators in the K-12 space looking to learn about coding and robotics. The edtech company aims to engage children with 100+ hours of guided coding curriculum content and they make it easy for the educator to deliver lessons with their purpose built teacher dashboard.

Highlighting on Enterprise Ireland’s backing to Robotify, Abhinav adds, “Enterprise Ireland is an investor in Robotify, and with our strong connections in India, we have helped Robotify navigate the process of entering the market. Apart from that, we are constantly promoting the edtech startup to gain more visibility and be noticed by the right partners to help accelerate the company to grow its reach.”

Robotify’s educational content enables children to learn to code robots and prepares them for the automation-driven workplace of the future. The Robotify courses are developed to US Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) standards and has been selected by US leading single sign-on education platform Clever as a ‘Clever for Startups’ preferred technology partner for its 78,000 US schools.

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Bangalore-based drone startup Aarav Unmanned Systems (AUS) has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding round from growx ventures, 500 Startups, and BellWether Advisors.

Existing investors StartupXseed, 3ONE4 Capital, and Sanjay Jesrani have also contributed to this round.

The proceeds from the round shall be used for expanding the business reach and furthering R&D.

“The new funding round shall help us penetrate deeper in our existing market, expand to some tough-to-crack and large potential applications in the near future, and establish a roadmap for applications in logistics and urban mobility market, which is our ultimate long-term goal. AUS has received a great response from the Indian market in a very short span, and is confident of becoming the dominant player in the commercial drone market in India, and presence in a couple of more countries, by 2019,” said Vipul Singh, CEO of AUS.

Founded in 2013 by Singh, Suhas Banshiwala, and Yeshwanth Reddy, AUS provides drone-based land surveying solutions.

The startup was initially incubated at the SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre (SIIC) at IIT-Kanpur, where a common interest in aero-modeling and robotics brought the AUS team together. AUS currently develops its own commercial grade drones and introduced first indigenous PPK enabled drone- INSIGHT-PPK in India which it claims is 3x more accurate and 2x faster than most commonly used solutions available in the market.

“Drones have the ability to dramatically reshape the way enterprises work, and bring about significant gains in productivity and efficiency, across a wide variety of sectors. We believe AUS will be at the forefront of creating this impact and are delighted to join them on this journey,” said Sheetal Bahl, MD, growx ventures.

AUS currently provides solutions to the mining, urban planning, roads, and railway sectors with 3D mapping and surveying solutions. Drones are a new trend and sweeping the GIS market in India. Many government and private organisations now have special programs to integrate drones-based solutions with their conventional GIS requirements.

“Drones have the potential to transform the world for the better. AUS is working on several exciting applications for drones and they’re impacting industries in amazing ways by making them smarter and more efficient; we are very excited to be a part of their journey,” said Shalini Prakash, Venture Partner, 500 Startups India.

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India’s second largest private lender HDFC Bank plans to install nearly 20 humanoids (robots) at its branches over the next couple of years, according to a PTI report.

The bank has partnered with Kochi-based startup Asimov Robotics for the same.

Christened Ira, the robot will be installed at the welcome desk of various branches, which will give directions to customers, in addition to helping them with various other jobs such as transactions.

The announcement was made by Nitin Chugh, Head (Digital Banking) at HDFC, at a press conference.

Chugh, however, mentioned that the introduction of humanoids will not lead to any job losses.

HDFC is not the first bank to install humanoids in India. Last year, City Union Bank had introduced robot at some of its branches in the country.

Asimov provides engineering products solutions and consultancy in the areas like robotic simulation and control, machine-vision, training, virtual reality, and navigation applications.  Its products include Cool Arm manipulator (used to assemble and
deliver the customer specific solutions fast), X-Terrabot Mobile manipulator (agricultural robotic applications, routine material transport in factories, warehouses, office buildings), Virtual Reality chair (which can emulate physical presence in virtual world through sensory experiences such as vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste, etc.), and Lamarck Humanoid (they facilitate the study of embodied cognition and the replication of simple tasks undertaken by humans), among others.

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