Headquartered in Gurugram, India, Collaborative Intelligence (CI) is a tech startup that drives creative disruption through innovation and design thinking, building cutting-edge technology and transformational solutions with a mission to encourage indigenisation. The company collaborates with entrepreneurs, academies, industries and governments, and supports the ‘Make in India’ policy.
With a strong global presence, CI has R&D centres with a network of in-house and partner labs across India, USA, Israel, Germany and Brazil specialising in the robotics and AI space. Sangeeta Das, Co- Founder, Collaborative Intelligence says that CI’s products are not only recognised in India but also in the Asia and ME region, “Most recently, we have been recognised and empanelled with a global airports authority and other government bodies in the R&D space. One of the critical aspects of indigenisation is quality of the product.” CI’s manufacturing network ranges from some of the top international manufacturing companies in India. “We identify our manufacturing partners to support us in producing world-class ruggedised products to simple and low cost variants for civil applications. As we complete two years of CI existence, it has been an excellent journey in terms of milestones from the recognition and appreciation, industry and government empanelment, patent ownership and most importantly creating a unique business model that supports innovation,” adds Das.
The company’s product range includes robotics, AI and cybersecurity, and the solution is defined by fusing high-end autonomous mobility solutions with human and signals intelligence. Recently the technology has been applied to address some of the most compelling problem statements in the Defense and Homeland Security.
Das points out that while the technology offered by CI is industry agnostics, it is largely applicable in Defence and Homeland Security, oil & gas, railways and financial services. In addition, the product can be effectively utilised in national disaster and relief, mining and agriculture, and airports. “Our products support search and rescue operations, public safety as first responders, remote leakage detection and repair, threat and defect detection, predictive analysis of potential corrosion related damage, linear asset monitoring and management, remote payload carrying vehicles and financial risk score and NPA reduction,” mentions Das.
The company has a strong focus on design and innovation. “Innovation to the extent of being disruptive is the essence of the development activities at CI,” remarks Das, adding that their focus has been in the Unmanned Ground Vehicle segment with integrated artificial intelligence through Machine Learning and Cognitive Intelligence in the robotics space.
CI’s unique mobility solution addresses most of the compelling challenges, from stair climbing capability to a completely unique form of mobility in the form of jumping by its variant of the bio-inspired robots. “In the O&G space, our technology has the ability to identify and accurately determine a multi-tiered, solution involving high frequency and resolution technology forming smaller waves, with the ability to pass in different ranges up to the metal including various insulation or layers on the tube, complemented by state of the art imaging techniques and a highly accurate remote robotic repair solution,” explains Das.
In the future, CI’s goal is to expand the R&D labs with enhancing the product development capability globally to capture the technology R&D space. With labs in India, Israel and US, CI is expanding the footprint into in-house labs in Germany and Brazil. CI also supports the Government’s Startup and Entrepreneurship ecosystem through the Indo-Israeli Accelerator with the world-renowned Israeli accelerator guru. “We at CI, believe that a strong network of private technology labs will help accelerate the innovation ecosystem in India. Whilst a robust academia infrastructure and brain power exists, it requires the appropriate and collective support of the ecosystem to encourage innovation,” states Das.
Reminding that CI believes in focusing on first of a kind technology that is designed and manufactured in India, Das says that CI’s most innovative products being in the UGV segment, has the ability to climb stairs and the other being in the bio-spired space that has a completely new form of mobility, that neither moves on wheels or flies but jumps as a part of a different form of locomotion.
CI has to its credit, three patents in a period of less than two years. Das affirms that India is well positioned to drive innovation with significant steps and initiatives by the Government to encourage entrepreneurship, MSMEs and startups, innovation is at its peak and commercial application of such indigenised technology has been seen.