IIT Madras Marine Robotics Startup Raises $1.6 Million In Pre-Series A Funding

IIT Madras incubated marine robotics company Planys Technologies has raised $1.6 million In Pre-Series A Funding from a group of investors including Kieretsu Forum, Lets Venture and Dutch oil and gas major Shell. Returning investors ONGC Startup Fund, Ranjan Pai’s family office MEMG, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan also participated in the funding round. 

The company will utilise the current round to boost its research and development, international expansion and to develop new software-assisted underwater asset management products.

Founded by IIT-Madras alumnus Tanuj Jhunjhunwala, Vineet Upadhyay, Rakesh Sirikonda and IIT-Madras faculty Prabhu Rajagopal and Krishnan Balasubramanian, Planys serves the underwater inspection industry with safer, highly reliable, and flexible solutions using marine robotics and associated analytics systems.

“Planys is driven by research and focuses on customers’ experience.We cater to very traditional industries that own large scale assets worth trillions of dollars and can be difficult to monitor consistently. They require digital solutions to increase operational efficiency and detect defects in a timely manner. Our data analytics and digital reporting platform in particular combined with our underwater robotics and NDT expertise, is a gamechanger," said Tanuj Jhunjhunwala, co-founder and CEO of Planys. 

Planys Technologies, which makes robots for monitoring the integrity and working of remote infrastructure assets, earlier raised $2 million in 2018 in the pre- Series A round.

Planys is currently also working with Shell on digital transformations for marine assets as part of the Shell E4 cohort using robotics, NDT, and data

The company was selected by Qualcomm for its Design in India challenge, enabling Internet of Underwater Things with the technology giant’s 5G capabilities for data collection and transmission across water-air mediums.