Niqo Robotics builds compact agricultural robots equipped with AI-driven computer vision, a proprietary AI camera, and deep learning models to identify and selectively spray target plants, claiming up to 90% reduction in chemical use. The company positions its robots to lower costs and boost farm profitability. It plans to enter new markets and accelerate global commercial adoption of spot-spray technology. Niqo expects to commercialize more than 90,000 acres in 2023–2024 and help over 1,800 farmers. Financially, the company’s Indian entity recorded only Rs 1.3 crore in revenue in FY23 while losses doubled to Rs 9.8 crore; audited FY24 numbers were not yet released. The nine-year-old company has raised $21 million in total funding to date. TartanSense builds smaller-sized robotic farm vehicles equipped with computer vision to perform sowing, spraying, weeding, and harvesting for smallholder farmers. Its latest robot, BladeRunner, can locate, identify, uproot weeds and spot-spray crops. The company says BladeRunner can cut chemical use by up to 45% and improve weeding efficiency sevenfold. TartanSense targets high-weeding-cost crops such as cotton and estimates a potential Indian market of about $3 billion per year based on 33 million acres and $100 per acre weeding spend. Founded in 2015 in Bengaluru by Jaisimha Rao with a team of Carnegie Mellon alumni, the startup’s mission is to make smallholder farmers wealthier by shipping monetizable robots. Financially, it has raised $7 million to date and is focused on scaling its fleet and deployments over the coming months.

Total raised

$18M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

May 2024