Where Grit Meets the Ground Beneath Us | Entrepreneur Stories

So can we start with your full names, the company name, and the briefest version of what the company does, like an elevator pitch?

Construction sites echo with manual labor, Wheelbarrows pushed by tired hands. Manish Jain and Pratik Patel saw backbreaking work demanding innovation. Flow Mobility builds autonomous electric robots that move materials, not muscles, from Bangalore to building sites nationwide.

How miserable the life of construction workers are in India. And even in this age where we are talking about 2024, But if you go to the construction sites, you would be transported into a world which probably would be 1980s. It's a very painful, backbreaking task because you have to carry those materials and you have to climb stairs sometimes. The terrain is not very even, it's up and down. Sometimes you'll have slurry, there's mud. So not a very easy terrain to walk on, but they have to carry the load. Either on their shoulder or the head, and then walk and navigate through that that terrain. These are not easy sites, right? In the sun, you have to carry the things. So that's not where a lot of people, if they have opportunity, they wouldn't like to work there. Nobody aspires to be a construction worker, right? If you ask a kid, he wouldn't say, "I want to be a construction worker when I when I when I grow old," right? So I'm born brought up in a small town in one of the western states of India called Rajasthan. I did my mechanical engineering from there, then I did my MBA. After MBA, I was working with IBM for a few years, and within 3-4 years, I realized that this is not the life that I want to live. It started in 2020 when I— my love for robots, because as a mechanical engineer, I could never— I always aspired to work in the industry, in the core technical industry, and 2020 was the time when we started hearing a lot about autonomous cars, robots, and the impact that they can make across industries, right? So that is what was a compelling reason for us to start going deeper into robotics.

So I come from central part of India, which is near Nagpur. I did my studies from that city and My family had been always involved in supplying to construction companies, and I've, right from very early stages while my studies were going on, I had always seen how material has been made, especially when it comes to wooden pieces, right from while the building is getting built and even post that while the interiors are happening. And that entire industry had been very segregated in a way, and The amount of technology infusion while the manufacturing was happening was also way too less. And that is where my studies in mechanical engineering started getting me into as to how can I help in building things which can help in increasing the entire optimization, optimizing the entire process of how things are being done as of now.

Flow Mobility transforms construction logistics. Autonomous wheelbarrows glide across sites, moving heavy loads safely and sustainably. Workers supervise instead of strain.

My name is Manish. I'm a founder at Flow Mobility, where we are building robots for construction industry, helping construction industry build better, faster, cheaper.

My name is Pratik, Pratik Patel. And I'm co-founder at Flow Mobility.

So we are a 12-member team now. In last 3 and a half years, we have grown from 2 people to 12 people. But that DNA is, I think, what is the key ingredient of how all of us are coming together and building it. We have been able to— so we have not raised a lot of money till now. Less than $1 million is what we have raised, and we are one of the very few companies in robotics who have been able to build and deploy a hardware solution raising less than a million. There's one person who has this remote in his hand who is able to run the robot. We can program the robot. It can autonomously navigate into the, into the entire environment. Different types of obstacles it can take care of. So because of our robot's ability to move the material, more material faster, we could eliminate this manual hauling of material which people were doing on their shoulders or on the head.

The entire core team sits over here in Bangalore and we focus on doing these things as fast as we can. But at the same time, when it comes to expanding to newer cities in India, so in the past 1 year we have grown the on-ground operations and we have deployed our machines across 10 different cities so that Entire ability to iterate fast and at the same time have the playbook to deploy faster has helped us and has worked for us till now. And now the plan is to actually take it to Middle East and US in the coming few months as well.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim mean for your company?

Opportunity to work with Tim would mean a big support system for us when we expand to US is the biggest market for construction automation, and working with Tim and Draper Network as such, I think, would open a lot of doors for us which otherwise would take a lot of time and energy for us to get into.

Vision-based autonomy meets Indian grit. Manish and Prateek earned their first patent in 2024, 3 years after filing. Flow Mobility doesn't just automate construction, it dignifies it.

So a million-dollar investment coming into company today, so we are right now on the path to profitability. We would be profitable, we will be breaking even next few months. So the investment, a million-dollar investment that comes in now, we would be allocating that more towards new products and new markets. So it will really accelerate our journey to expand our product portfolio and also expand our geographical presence. It took 2.5 years, multiple iterations, sleepless nights for us to reach to this product. The entire product is completely designed by us, Grounds of This, our own designs. The software, hardware, electronics, So I think that is something that we're really proud of, what we have been able to build. And second thing which I think is something which gives a lot of fulfillment back to us is that we have been able to do it without breaking the bank, without spending millions of dollars. That's something which I think is a badge of honor that we would like to wear.

Can I get your full name, your company name, and the shortest pitch of what you guys do?

Odisha's roads hold stories of waiting for help, for hope, for ambulances that arrive too late. Deepti Sundar saw broken systems costing lives. Mo Ambulance became his answer. Tech-powered emergency care at your fingertips.

Helping people or doing something for the people is a different thing, but doing for the people or helping people during the requirement of a health crisis or something, so that is something like keeping us moving, us like keeping us forward, like always pushing us to move forward and to do something more and more and more for the people. So this sector is also like Helping us to do whatever we want to for the people and for us also.

I have started my journey as an education in the public health, as a researcher in the public health. So from the 2003-04 started my journey in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a researchers. So within a span of 20 years, I have seen the problem in the healthcare sector and in the healthcare sector. Emergency healthcare sector is a major part which we should save the life within the golden hour.

So I wanted to develop something to help people, and in the meantime, I met our founder, Mr. Diti sir, and from there we have developed lots of products for emergency healthcare. For example, like to monitor the quality, we have developed Amtech Ambulance Technology Kit. For monitoring the patient vitals in real time, we have developed Amtech V. And also for a panic situation, we have developed one emergency response system, that is ERS, Emergency Response System. In a single tap, the ambulance will be available within 10 minutes of time to the selected coordinates. So that was our innovation.

We are fitting the oxygen sensor in the ambulance. So on the way, we are monitoring the ambulance level is Coming because the oxygen saturation level is deteriorating. So we found on the cloud that the oxygen cylinder level is coming at the same time, same time also the patient has to move to another 10 kilometers. So when we monitor on the cloud, so we just transfer to the pilot that in the next station you have to fill up the oxygen because we have to move another 10 kilometers.

So that was, we saved the life अपे प्रेग्नेंट लेडी आल्सो बाय टेकिंग द मैक्सिमम ऑक्सीजन फ्रॉम द फिलिंग सेशन नेक्स्ट फिलिंग सेशन। वी हैव सेव्ड मेनी लाइफ्स, मोर देन 20,000 प्लस पेशेंट्स वी हैव सर्व्ड। अमांग देम देर वेर एल्डरली पीपल, देर वेर न्यूबोर्न चाइल्ड्स आल्सो। वी हैव ट्रांसफर्ड अ न्यूनेट क And that was a great success.

MO Ambulance connects patients, ambulances, and hospitals on one platform. GPS-tracked care with 24/7 response. Subham's tech expertise transforms dispatch into precision.

My name is Dipti Sundar Mohanty. I'm the founder of the Clean Wealth Innovation Private Limited.

My name is Subham Subhadarshi Panda. I am the Chief Technology Officer of Clean Wealth Innovation.

The name behind because we are from Odisha. So in Odisha, the government has started with different Mo Circle, Mo Clinic. So all these things. So Mo is mine. So when we started this journey from the Odisha, our state, so we thought the Mo will accept by the people because it touching the heart. Okay, my ambulance. Okay, so I thought because we are starting the journey from this Bhubaneswar. Odisha. So we should give the name MOH so that people will understand, okay, we can call the MOH Ambulance during the emergency. So I thought we should give the name as MOH Ambulance. We have started in 2021. So now we have strengthened already our technology team, the total operational team. So we are a team of around more than 80 plus, and the tech team is purely in-house. And the technology we are developing in-house. And currently we are already expanded to 7 states in India. And also we have also partnering with the major brand hospitals like Apollo, Ambuja, Niortia.

Before the meeting with Mr. Tim and all, we told— people asked like which company we belong to. Mo Ambulance, we belong to CleanoHealth Mo Ambulance. Oh, Mo Ambulance, we don't know you, but we know your company. So that is a big achievement for us.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for you and your company?

Working with Tim Draper will give us like actually an upper hand to like move forward like with a lot of like positive notes because he's a great well-known person in this field for the startups particularly. His investments and all everything gives upper hand to the From Bhubaneswar to Singapore, recognition follows impact.

Klino Health innovation isn't just moving patients, it's moving mountains of bureaucracy. Dipti and Shubham prove emergency care shouldn't be an emergency itself.

What would a million-dollar investment mean to this company right now?

A million-dollar investment would help us to save more and more lives and to expand to multiple geographies with enhancing more with our technologies and implementing it to help others and grow much higher.

If you guys win with Tim tomorrow, who would be your first call?

Definitely I will call to my father, then definitely my Wife and dad, but my first call will be to my team because they are the person with me for bringing all these things.

And I'll call my parents first. I'm a bachelor, I'm not married, so I'll call my parents obviously, and because they are the inspiration, like what I am today because of them.

So could we start with your full names, your company name, and like an elevator pitch, like the shortest version of what you guys do?

Beneath India's waters lie pipelines, ports, secrets. Debendra Pradhan and Biswajit Swain dove deep, literally. Coratia Technologies surfaces with robots That see what humans can't. Underwater inspections reimagined from the NIT Roorkee Laad-Dorm.

It is sometimes said that underwater robotics is the most critical and difficult branch of robotics because, I mean, back when our televisions were black and white, back then we had sent satellites to outer space, to outer planets, but we have taken Till now, till date, we haven't explored our oceans completely. So that brought in a sense of, I mean, curiosity in us, and we set forth to explore this.

We both did our bachelor's and master's from NIT Rourkela. So during our college days, we were involved in different, like, projects, and during our college time, we came across this robotics and majorly the underwater robot Project, and like during that time we find found a synergy between us that like yes we can build our company in future.

Right now we are slightly less than three years of the start of this entrepreneurship journey, and within this three years the first one year went by in product development. Now when I say that we spent one year in developing the product, so that might appear funny that that. Within 1 year, we were able to develop this product. This has been possible because all the testings— I mean, the foundation was laid down right when we were in our university days. Initially, when development was going on, so it was sometimes robot is in water. We were also with the robot inside the water to check its performance.

While testing our robot, we have to carry it with us and check the stability, everything. Whether it is performing well or not, and gradually from test pool, swimming pool to different water bodies, then to ocean. So this is how it has progressed.

Croatia Technologies builds underwater inspection robots for India's maritime future. Jala Simha and Jala Duta, ocean lions and ocean messengers, inspect ship hulls, secure subsea cables. college projects turned Navy contracts worth ₹66 crore.

My name is Devendra Pradhan.

Hello everyone, I'm Biswajit Swain.

We are the founders of Coraxia Technologies. We design and develop underwater robots. In the course of this testing, we did identify that our robot was able to carry the weight of a person, which might have made it the lightest in the world. To carry the weight of 85 kgs per person. So that brought in another use case of our robot, that it can be used in search and rescue mission. And in order to prove this claim, in order to verify this claim of ours, one of our clients, to be specific, Indian Navy, one of the soldiers got on the top of the robot and he was like jumping and the robot was able to balance him. was able to lift him and carry him based on his motion. In one of our projects, I mean, in the early days of our project execution, so we did an inspection of a dam. It was more than 65 years old. It belongs to a, it belongs to a very big PSU in India. So we were able to send our robot to a very hazardous condition Around, I mean, 55 feet below the water surface where the gate of a dam was partially open. So there was some problem defect in the dam, which is why more than 60 years old structure, the dam was unable to close. A lot of thought went into it, but we were able to send our robot and get the data from that highly turbulent and high flow condition. We're able to get the data and find out the issue of what the internal problem is. And so yes, that did give us a big moral boost on how to handle risks, how to take risks.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean to your company right now?

Yeah, so definitely when Team Draper, if at all Team Draper comes into our company, So it would be definitely a very big boost to us. Whatever we are innovating, whatever we are doing, we are doing in a limited geography. We did hear that recently, a few— I mean, around a year back, there was expedition to see the Titanic underwater, and the vessel that was carrying a few people, it exploded, it imploded, and it was a catastrophe. It was just 4 kilometers below the ocean water. And, but we know that the deepest point is 11 kilometers. So yes, there are a lot many things, lot many marvelous things under the water which we want people to see. We want to take people there. So in order to make this dream a reality, I think Tim Draper could help us.

Shark Tank brought visibility. The Indian Navy brought validation. From inspecting ship hulls to securing subsea cables, Croatia navigates where humans cannot. Two engineers from Odisha charting India's underwater future.

What would a million-dollar investment mean for your company right now?

A million-dollar investment would definitely help us execute more projects. Handle more clients, expand the team. So a team expansion is one big thing that we would do with a big investment coming in.

It's a continuous learning process. So from an engineer to an entrepreneur, it was like entirely it was a learning process, and we are learning every day, learning new things every day, and we are becoming better and better every day.

So that is How? And now we, I mean, it's almost kind of adopted thought in our team is that we'll not settle for mediocrity no matter what it is, because either we be the first in the world or we become the best.

So let's start with an intro. Just your full name, okay? Your company name, and like the tightest elevator pitch of what you guys do.

Every delivery truck carries weight, literal and environmental. Gagan Agrawal, ex-Isro rocket scientist, saw vehicles burdened by their own mass. Planet Electric strips. EVs down to essentials. 67% lighter, 50% less battery. Logistics liberated.

We are engineers, so we just want to tackle the toughest problems. And since the last 5 years, a lot of us have been exposed to the effects of climate change with El Niño coming in, the hottest years over the last 3 years, understanding how technology can perhaps get us out of this. Well, one thing aerospace engineers don't like is weight. You're like, well, if I can shave off 50 to 60% of the weight, why shouldn't I at an affordable cost? So I come from a typical middle-class family in India where there is one dream in high school To get through IIT JEE, because that's like the most premier engineering exam. Went through the same grind, got a decent rank, not a really good one. But the best part was there was this new institute from ISRO, the NASA of India, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. It was just coming up and it had done just one year and I was like super curious. I probably was around 14 years old when I started reading astrophysics books. So I'm like, okay, I gotta get myself there. I started with Indian Space Research Organisation, did my aerospace engineering, had fun building a couple of rockets. One was reusable, dealt with hypersonics, and these areas basically gave us so much about material science, you know, You know, you're going from -250°C to 3,000°C in being able to keep them intact while they're going up and coming back. So that taught us a lot, and a lot of that inspiration and that expertise that we built there within the space organization came to what we're doing now. But in the middle, I consulted a ton and found, my gosh, I mean, what we've been doing in aerospace and aviation for the last 40 years We should do it here because any amount of structural weight is detrimental to the kind of efficiencies we want out there. And if you have to truly transition to sustainability, to sustainable transportation, I think we, we need these technologies.

Planet Electric builds ultra-lightweight electric commercial vehicles. Composite chassis at just 65 kilograms. Aerospace materials meet street delivery. Delhi's innovation hub making cargo carriers that defy gravity's tyranny.

I'm Gagan Agrawal. I'm the co-founder at Planet Electric. We are innovating in material science to lightweight auto structures and build the next generation of auto structures. We don't want to, in the name of technology, build something that cannot be used. So yeah, so we have, we still have a small team. We are a 15-member team, but every engineer pulls their own weight.

Let me give you a little bit about the prototype itself.

So the entirety of the chassis that takes the load and the body is all composites. We use very little steel or aluminium. I have driven it, our engineers have driven it. Extremely stable vehicle, properties of composite, very soundproof, etc., etc. But most importantly, it works. It works in the toughest of Indian roads and sort of put the vehicle through that stress test. We like to attack very specific problems. A lot of work is done on computers beforehand, before we actually go out there. Once that is done, then we go for material testing, then we build a structure, then we go for structural testing. Electronics, electrical is a separate line of work where we build the architecture, build the software, test it, and then the hardware in loop comes together and then the vehicle comes together.

So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean to your company?

This is a very opportune time for us to work with Tim Draper. This partnership potentially could open a lot of doors for us where we would be able to knock on them, validate our proposition through some of those pre-orders, and cross that dangerous valley that every startup has to cross. The transition from a deep tech startup to a successful business means having strong partnerships such as the one with Tim Draper.

From building satellites to building futures, Planet Electric doesn't just make electric trucks, it makes them make sense. Affordable, efficient, sustainable. Gagan proves the best vehicle innovations come from thinking beyond vehicles.

What would a million-dollar investment mean for your project right now?

The $1 million on offer gets us past the customer testing validation phase, puts us in a position to raise that big cash that allows us to go to production. Again, same, same answer as I'll give before. The transition from a deep tech startup to commercializing the technology to building first of a kind of that factory that can build it, whether you do it or you outsource it, needs that important cash. And that $1 million from Tim Draper could be one of the biggest validations we get out there in the market.

What would the younger version of yourself who, you know, was working as a rocket scientist, or even the version of yourself If you were to talk to yourself who was in finance and a consultant, what would they like? Now that you've taken the leap into entrepreneurship, what would that version of yourself think? Would they be surprised? Would they be proud? What do you think? How do you think that would play out?

It's a very interesting question. Probably delayed. I should have done this sooner. The fire was always there. It's just about the right timing and the resources coming together. There have been a couple of other experiments that I kept doing while I was working, looking at markets, how to build a business here, there, how to innovate. But none of those germinated due to different factors. So I was always looking where would the next good idea come that could really propel. And yeah, so that's, that's what I think.

Cool.