This is a very interesting story of bringing really complex technology from India to the global market with a complex sales cycle.

The long term potential is huge. The short term complexity of the business is equally huge. The founding team is doing an admirable job navigating the opportunity with commitment and resolve.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Ritukar Vijay: I was born and raised in India in Jaipur. It’s a very festive and cultural city. I did my schooling there. I used to play sports. I was a hundred-meter sprinter. From there on, I was always excited to experience extracurricular activities. I learned a lot being a sports person in my school days. I ended up doing engineering with a pure focus on technology. I still wasn’t sure what was my calling. Even at school, it was more about sports and regular studies.

Sramana Mitra: Were you still operating out of Jaipur out of college?

Ritukar Vijay: I finished back in 2007. I Joined a large multinational software company. During my college days, I started working in robotics as a side gig. It was purely a hobby. I participated in multiple national and international robotics competitions. I got a flavor of what my inkling is which is part of the journey of finding out what you love and what you want to do in life.

I joined as a software engineer. In about 18 months, I realized that pure software is not my calling. I would love to see things in action – things which can move and have AI behind it. I joined a robotics company in India which was started by one of the alumni of Carnegie-Mellon University. I joined back in 2009. Right away, I started working on unmanned drones. That’s when the side gig took shape as a full-fledged career.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with that robotics company?

Ritukar Vijay: I stayed there for four and a half years. I worked on defense technologies. We worked on large battle tanks that were used for surveillance mostly to save people, then we moved towards applications within robotics – warehousing and manufacturing was one of them.

Sramana Mitra: This was in Delhi?

Ritukar Vijay: Yes. I moved out to TCS Innovation Labs. There, I was focusing on a larger set of audience. I realized after joining a large company that the pace was not a perfect match for me. I had to move back to startups again. Doing a standard multinational job is restricting in a way. This was back in 2014. Then I had a couple of startups.

In one startup, I joined as a CTO and raised some angel investment. We couldn’t scale it up further because we were working for a medical application. The product itself is not everything but how adoption of the product happens determines where the startup will go. We made a good MVP, but then we realized that in order to have adoption, we had to go through clearance that will take more than two years.

Then I joined the same robotics company, but I joined in a product strategy role. That small six months stint changed the trajectory of my entire life. In 2019, I moved out of that. I joined a company in Germany where I was leading BMW’s autopilot.

I did that for some time. I realized that autonomous cars will take some time to hit mainstream. How can we use the technology to solve some real problems? That’s how we focused on deliveries. Finding the right co-founder is like finding the right life partner.