Miko Raises INR 23 Cr In Pre-series B Round Led By Stride Ventures Existing investors Chiratae Ventures, YourNest Venture Capital and NASSCOM former chairman Keshav Murugesh also participated in the round
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Mumbai-based startup Miko—founded in 2015 by IIT-Bombay graduates Sneh R. Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar and Chintan Raikar—has raised INR 23 crore in a pre-series B round led by Stride Ventures.
Existing investors Chiratae Ventures, YourNest Venture Capital and NASSCOM former chairman Keshav Murugesh also participated in the round.
The trio founded Emotix which focuses on creating emotionally intelligent solutions and its products leverage proprietary and state of the art artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and Internet-of-Things.
Launch Of Miko 2
After the success of their first generation of Miko, the robotics startup developed Miko 2—a puppy-sized companion robot for children. It uses AI and voice-recognition technology to see, hear, sense, express, talk and recognize faces. The widget tackles a multifaceted need-gap of education, technology, entertainment and hence is an enabler in effective parenting.
"Our growth journey till Miko 2 was about creating a product that meets the needs of today's parents who seek a positive and trusted gateway of technology. Miko 2 has now evolved into a powerful content subscription platform with global content alliances," said Vaswani, co-founder and chief executive officer, Miko, in a statement. "We are on track to surpass the 100,000 user mark in the coming quarters with Miko 2 hosting hundreds of applications and use cases. It's very encouraging for the entire Miko team to build a global consumer technology brand out of India. In our journey, we are very pleased to partner with Stride Ventures and are looking forward towards a long-term relationship."
"At Stride, it is our mission to make the credit ecosystem more accessible to startups. The investment in Miko represents Stride's commitment to enabling frontier technologies that have the potential to disrupt the status quo. We are proud to be associated with a company that is revolutionizing pedagogy through interactive IoT," added Ishpreet Gandhi, founder and managing partner, Stride Ventures.
Wide-ranging footmark
After the US expansion of Miko, it has now scaled its user base in more than 90 countries. The company saw over 20 per cent month-on-month growth in engagement during the pandemic surpassing 70 million interactions on its platform. The establishment also observed an instant boost in demand as parents are hunting for an alternative for lesser screen-time for their kids.
While Miko is one of the only Indian-made social robots, there have been other such bots in the market for far longer. They come in the shape of pet dogs or cats, like Sony's Aibo, or MarsCat by Shenzhen-based Elephant Robotics.
