Video Analytics Platform, Wobot Raises pre-series A Funding from Sequoia India

The AI-powered computer vision technology for CCTVs helps make monitoring of SOPs productive and automated for users across sectors 

Wobot Intelligence, an AI-powered video analytics platform has raised pre-series A from Sequoia India. Wobot’s tool connects to any existing CCTV or other forms of cameras and helps monitor process compliance while detecting and tracking anomalies in an organization’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). It offers video analytics for SOPs which include hygiene, safety, productivity, and customer experience to customers across industries. 

Founded by Adit Chhabra, Tapan Dixit, and Tanay Dixit, Wobot will use the funds for global expansion and strengthening its proprietary technology platform. It will also help the company make some key executive appointments, expand its sales and marketing efforts as well as broaden and accelerate product development to cater to more use cases and customers. 

CCTVs are common in factories, restaurants, workplaces, and several other sectors but are monitored ineffectively by humans in a big control room with multiple monitors. The vast amount of this data is unused and does not give any meaningful or actionable insight. Wobot is resolving this big gap with ‘smarter video analytics solutions that leverage deep learning to achieve more productive and automated monitoring. These solutions can be personalized and implemented across industries such as hospitality, manufacturing, pharma and retail among others.

Adit Chhabra, co-founder and CEO of Wobot said, “Wobot’s vision has always been to create a transparent and seamless workplace with 100% process compliance where the camera acts as a third eye and provides continuous feedback for employees on the job. This does not necessarily mean only pointing out violations but also giving a pat on the back for following the right SOPs and adhering to compliances." 

The market for CCTV installations was estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 11% YoY globally pre-Covid-19. It will grow even faster in the post-Covid-19 era. Covid-19 era has made businesses realise the value proposition of remote monitoring. Pre Covid-19, hygiene and safety of the workforce was a good-to-have now, it is a must have and companies are appreciating the importance of automation. For any future business continuity plans, video analytics will play a huge role and Wobot is well-positioned to take advantage of this opportunity”, he added.  

Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP said, “Computer vision has seen tremendous advances in recent years, resulting in widespread adoption for varied enterprise needs. This includes process compliance in areas such as security, manufacturing, and retail. Increased concern for hygiene and safety post-Covid-19 has heightened the importance of process compliance. Sequoia India is excited to partner with the Wobot team as they build a global SaaS business serving this enterprise need.”

How does it work?

Wobot employs deep learning techniques to detect any change in SOPs, automatically list them, and make them trackable for relevant stakeholders. Once plugged into an existing camera, this AI then detects people, objects, and activities. Basis an industry or company’s selected use cases, it raises alerts of any deviation from those processes. The alerts are received by the supervisor with a short clip for immediate and effective action. 

Examples of use cases; 

• In a kitchen - it can detect use of hairnet, gloves and 20-second hand wash compliance.
• At a construction site - It can detect the use of safety jackets, helmets and worker productivity
• In a manufacturing plant- It can Detect loading/unloading activity and duration or a specific task on an assembly line.
• In a hospital - It can detect PPE and hand wash compliance
• In a pharma lab - It can detect PPE gowning process
• In a restaurant - It can detect cleaning activity as well as order/wait times 
• In stores - It can detect customer service within a time limit or sanitisation activity.

Today, Wobot has become a cost-effective and autonomous way of monitoring hygiene, safety, productivity, and customer experience across various organizations. Wobot is a robust team of 60+ and has completed 10,000+ installations for customers including Kitopi, CultFit, Rebel Foods, Travel Food Services, EatFit, Blue Tokai, Apparel Group, Max Estates & Housing and more. 

In 2018, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) signed up with Wobot to monitor the food production process across its several base kitchens. Subsequently Wobot intelligence raised a seed round of funding from Titan Capital too. 

Since then Wobot has been continuously partnering up with clients across the country, Middle East and South East Asia where it aims to expand presence going forward. Further as the next phase of growth, Wobot aims to enter the US market as well as introduce more use cases for the healthcare and manufacturing sectors.

About Wobot:

Wobot.ai enables vision-based process compliance by plugging its AI-first SaaS tool into existing CCTV cameras. It has helped organizations in Food, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Retail, and Pharma to reduce the cost of monitoring, risk of non-compliance, and improve customer NPS. Customers can choose from industry-specific process compliance modules like hygiene, workforce/workplace safety, customer SOPs, and more. This allows for existing cameras to automatically list and deliver deviations to relevant stakeholders as well as provide a dashboard with insights. Wobot currently provides solutions to several organizations like IRCTC, Rebel Foods, CureFit, Max, Kitopi, and Smartworks among others.

Wobot Intelligence launches secure “Live Streaming” feature to aid retail, food and hospitality players in their quest to win customer confidence as India gradually opens up

One of the biggest challenges facing retail, food, hospitality, and related sectors as India(globe) opens up is regaining their customer’s trust and confidence. In a definite boost to their efforts, Wobot Intelligence (Wobot.ai), an AI-driven computer vision SaaS venture, today unveiled a “live streaming” feature that is available online, via apps/website of respective brands. Highly secure, the feature will allow players in these sectors to provide real-time visual transparency of their operations to their end customers, to gain their trust/confidence. For example, when it comes to a hotel, the end customer can see for themselves whether it’s following the necessary hygiene norms and while ordering food online can have virtual access to the kitchen, etc. The same can be replicated with offline retailers, healthcare centers & gymnasiums, etc. The new feature is targeted beyond India and has since received interest from multiple known players in these sectors.

Burger Singh is one of the top fast food joint located in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Maharashtra, Dehradun and Noida will be using this feature offered by Wobot. LimeTray a cloud restaurant POS software for restaurants which can Punch-In orders, intimate the kitchen by printing KOTs, handle billing, orders, and receipts etc will also be using this feature. Apart from these many other prominent companies will be using this feature by Wobot.

Unveiling the feature, Adit Chhabra, Co-Founder, and CEO, said, “We are excited to launch this additional feature which will help brands across these sectors create trust/proximity with their customers through secure live streaming. Along with the hygiene and safety tracking solution that we have available, we now provide a suite of highly relevant solutions that help businesses navigate the current and post COVID-19 scenario. And since all our solutions are built as plug-n-play, customers can look forward to deploying and benefiting from these solutions quickly.”

The recently launched “hygiene tracking” solution, plugs into existing cameras to effectively monitor hygiene and safety compliance (20 second-hand wash, PPE & social distancing compliance, premise cleaning/sanitation crowd counting analysis, etc.).  Wobot’s deep learning Video Analytics tool plugs into existing CCTV cameras to identify people, objects, and their activities, besides having the feature of real-time analytics to notify managers in case of violations.

About Wobot: 

Wobot.ai enables vision-based process compliance by plugging its AI-first SaaS tool into existing CCTV cameras. It has helped organizations in Food, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Retail, and Pharma to reduce the cost of monitoring, risk of non-compliance, and improve customer NPS. Customers can choose from industry-specific process compliance modules like hygiene, workforce/workplace safety, customer SOPs and more. This allows existing cameras to automatically list and deliver deviations to relevant stakeholders as well as provide a dashboard with insights. IRCTC, Rebel Foods, Cure.fit, Max, Kitopi, and Smartworks are among some of Wobot’s key customers. 

Computer Vision Firm WOBOT unveils AI-based, plug-N-play Hygiene Tracking Solution for Businesses to Ensure Covid-19 Guidelines Compliance

WOBOT’s one-of-its-kind, AI-based, plugNplay “hygiene tracking solution” to help businesses monitor/ensure Covid-19 guidelines compliance

Keeps a close watch on 20-second hand-wash, PPE, social distancing & premise sanitization 

Wobot Intelligence, an AI-driven computer vision SaaS venture that helps hospitality, food, retail, and manufacturing businesses to monitor operations, today announced a unique full suite, plugNplay, hygiene tracking solution that can be plugged into existing cameras.

When connected to an existing CCTV or camera the solution can effectively monitor 20 second-hand wash, PPE & social distancing compliance, and premise cleaning/sanitation activities. The solution amalgamates facial, activity, gesture, and object recognition. Analyzed visual data is delivered in real-time as notifications on Wobot app, WhatsApp, or e-mail to specified stakeholders.  A web-based central dashboard also keeps track of all organizational data on hygiene compliance in one place.

This hygiene and safety monitoring solution has been implemented across India & Middle East at Kitopi, IRCTC, and Rebel Foods & Curefit among others. At IRCTC, where Wobot’s tool has been in operation for a year, there is a noticeable improvement in their hygiene level which has led to a 50% increase in positive sentiment on Twitter. 

Talking of the new solution, Adit Chhabra, CEO, Wobot Intelligence said, “The COVID-19 driven hygiene guidelines are here to stay even post lock-down is lifted. It’s the new normal for businesses and organizations across India/worldwide. And physical monitoring beyond a point is not effective or scaleable or prohibitively expensive. By ensuring 24x7 monitoring and real-time feed on compliance we are taking the load off business owners and heads of locations or teams in ensuring compliance and improving sanitization in their premises. This inturn ensures the well-being of their employees/team members while bringing down the compliance costs significantly. Happy to play our bit through this solution which is timely and effective.” 

Wobot enables vision-based process compliance by plugging its AI-first SaaS tool into existing CCTV cameras. It has helped organizations in Food, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Retail, and Pharma to reduce the cost of monitoring, risk of non-compliance, and improve customer NPS. Customers can choose from industry-specific process compliance modules like hygiene, workforce/workplace safety, customer SOPs, and more. This allows for existing cameras to automatically list and deliver deviations to relevant stakeholders as well as provide a dashboard with insights. Wobot currently provides solutions to several organizations like IRCTC, Rebel Foods, CureFit, Max, Kitopi, and Smartworks among others.

Indian Startup Wobot Wins Innovation Prize at Seedstars Global 2019

Seedstars World, the biggest startup competition focusing on emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes, held its grand finale with the sixth edition of the Global Seedstars Summit. Over 1000 people attended the event in Lausanne, Switzerland, together with startups, investors, mentors and corporates, from all over the globe.

14 out of 67 startups invited were from Asia and two were among the 12 finalists on Seedstar Summit day.

Blended, the leading school platform in Latin America, was ccrowned as Winner of the competition.

Besides, an Indian startup Wobot has been selected as winner of Innovation Prize by Tag Heuer, one of the category in the competition. Headquartered in Delhi, Wobot is a Computer Vision solutions startup that automate monitoring of surveillance systems and compliance checks by deploying a layer of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on CCTV infrastructure.

[caption id="attachment_129625" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Tanay Dixit, Product Head at WOBOT, receiving the Innovation Prize Award on the Final Summit Day[/caption]

After covering 80+ countries throughout 2018 with local and regional competitions, Seedstars invited all winners to Switzerland. They had the chance to compete for different prizes, including up to $500K in equity investment and the title of Seedstars Global Winner.

The Seedstars Summit is not only a conference but an opportunity for stakeholders active in impact investment, tech and entrepreneurship to network and benefit from a unique hands-on growth experience. During April 2nd and 3rd, startups participated in a two-day bootcamp with more than 60 experts supporting them in achieving their next milestones. During the private Investor Forum on April 4th, 12 finalists were selected to compete on the main stage. On the Summit Day - April 5th - the startups delivered 3-minute pitches on the main stage in front of more than 1,000 hand-picked ecosystem builders, corporates, investors, startup enthusiasts representing some of the most prominent names of tech and entrepreneurship in emerging markets.


“The Seedstars experience, I believe, is very important for entrepreneurs. More than the money, I have received so much and taken in so many great ideas from entrepreneurs all over the world. Seedstars work is fundamental in showcasing that great companies exist everywhere.” says Hernandez, CFO & Founder of  Blended: a mobile communication platform connecting schools with families in Latin America. With a user friendly collaborative interface, they optimize communication, and improve learning results with state-of-the-art technology at an affordable cost.

According to Pierre-Alain Masson co-founder at Seedstars, “We are very proud to be supporting all these entrepreneurs and we’ll continue to expand our activities with the launch of new acceleration and training programs across the world. We’ll also be announcing more funding to these unbelievable entrepreneurs that we have seen on stage all week.”

On top of the $500,000 investment prize for the Seedstars Global Winner, Seedstars and its partners awarded 7 additional prizes:

• Public Prize by Vaud: SPEI allowed the Summit attendees to vote for the best tech start-ups among the Seedstars Global Competition winners. YNMO from Saudi Arabia is a SaaS that allows disabilities service providers including schools, centers & clinics to design and monitor individualized treatment plans.


• Labeskey / Schoolap, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, won the Transforming Education Prize by TRECC and the School of Management Fribourg, winning access to the Seedstars Growth Program worth $50,000. The online platform provides tools to improve the education system with school administration management modules.


• TAG Heuer, Seedstars World official timekeeper, partnered with Seedstars Summit to reward the Innovation Prize to Wobot. The Indian startup allows companies to automate their surveillance systems with Artificial Intelligence.


• Seedstars Vaccine Delivery Challenge was awarded to the South African startup Iyeza, by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. $10,000 will be provided to improve their web platform for the delivery of Human PapillomaVirus (HPV) vaccine to young women.


• Also with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Seedstars Malaria Challenge was awarded to Medsaf, through their platform, the Nigerian startup connects pharmacies and hospitals with safe and cost-effective medication.


• Along with Seedstars, Merck awarded the Life Science Prize to Oxpecker Labs from Hong Kong. They will participate in the Merck Acceleration program and scale up their non-invasive sweat sensor to help prevent dehydration and heat strokes.


• 7keema, the first on-demand home nursing services of its kind from Egypt, won the Rising Tide Foundation Empowerment Prize. They won access to the Seedstars Growth Program as well as an equity investment.

In order to have true impact Seedstars can count on the support of great partners: SPEI, School of Management Fribourg, TRECC, TAG Heuer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Rising Tide Foundation, EPFL, CVCI, Lausanne Région and Ville de Lausanne, Nespresso.

Additionally, 8 startups from developed markets looking to expand or solve problems in emerging markets pitched on the Breakout Stage. Tag Heuer crowned DOT Glasses winner and Noisypeak runner-up. hiLyte came out third and was supported by our partner Logitech.

Moreover, Seedstars is proud to announce its partnership with First Growth Ventures' founders Tamim El Zein and Maxime Bouan to launch a $100mn sub-Saharan Africa venture fund. The fund will focus on early stage investments from USD 250 thousand to USD 5 million in the most promising innovative ventures across sectors and countries. The fund is the first of a series of regional funds Seedstars will launch in the coming years to continue the mission of accelerating and supporting entrepreneurs at all stages.