India's Robotics Startups Tackle Hazardous, Manual Labor
24 Jul 2026
Every year, workers in India die cleaning industrial storage tanks, rail wagons and sewers—succumbing to toxic fumes or lack of oxygen. Three Indian deeptech startups are betting that robots, not just regulation, are the answer. Unibose, Flo Mobility and Hachidori Robotics are each targeting a different slice of hazardous or manual labor—confined-space cleaning, construction material handling, and warehouse logistics—and each has recently raised capital to scale.
Unibose: robots that don't replace workers, but remove them from danger
Founded in 2016 in Maraimalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, Unibose builds robots designed to clean tanks, rail wagons and sewers without requiring a human to physically enter. The company was started by Manikandan Dakshinamoorthy, Sakthivel Panneerselvam and Samayaraj Durairaj—a team spanning chemical, mechanical and robotic engineering.
Founder and CEO Manikandan Dakshinamoorthy frames the mission narrowly: "a robot cannot replace humans, but must replace thousands of workers entering confined spaces daily for their livelihood."
The numbers behind that pitch are notable. Unibose says its robots cut cleaning time by up to 40% and cut operating costs by nearly as much. The company also claims its robots are Asia's first to achieve ATEX Zone-0 certification—a European standard for equipment operating safely in explosive atmospheres—and that they're built in India at close to half the cost of comparable global systems.
Clients include IndianOil, CPCL's Manali refinery, and Borouge in Abu Dhabi. IndianOil named Unibose's work "Idea of the Year" in 2020. The company has raised roughly $1 million total, including Rs 5.5 crore in 2025 from O2 Angels Network, SiriusOne and IN44 Capital, and an earlier Rs 2.5 crore seed round from Tamil Nadu's state startup agency.
Unibose is now shifting toward a robot-as-a-service model, letting contractors hire the technology rather than buy it outright, and plans to expand across India, the Gulf and Southeast Asia while deepening AI-based inspection and compliance tools.
Flo Mobility: automating the construction site
Construction employs more than 270 million people globally, yet the industry uses only about 15 to 20 robots per 10,000 workers—compared with more than 600 per 10,000 in car manufacturing. Flo Mobility, founded in 2021 by CEO Manesh Jain and COO Pratik Patel, is targeting that gap with the Flo Hauler, a battery-powered autonomous robot that can carry loads of up to 1.5 tonnes.
The company has deployed more than 60 robots across 25 sites in 10 Indian states, working with clients including Larsen & Toubro, Godrej Properties, Embassy Group, Sobha, Capacite Infra and KEC International. Customers report roughly 45% cost savings, 50% faster material movement, and a 67% drop in workplace accidents—though the report notes these figures haven't been independently verified.
In May 2026, Flo Mobility raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A round co-led by Mela Ventures and Arali Ventures, with participation from ARTPARK, VentureGarage, JITO Incubation & Innovation Foundation and DevX Ventures. Combined with an earlier Rs 6.5 crore raise, total fundraising sits at roughly $3.3 million. The company employs about 25 people and is eyeing international expansion starting with the Middle East.
Jain says the goal isn't to replace skilled labor but to "free it to do work that matters."
Hachidori: indoor GPS for warehouses
Hachidori Robotics, founded in 2019, builds autonomous mobile robots that move materials through warehouses and factories without requiring floor modifications. The company holds more than three patents on indoor positioning technology, which it describes as an indoor equivalent of GPS. Its product range spans eight variants, carrying shipments from under 50 kg to 4,000 kg.
Hachidori says its robots cost about a third of imported autonomous vehicles and can raise material movement efficiency by up to three times. Headcount has grown from about 11 people in late 2021 to over 120 today, serving automotive, consumer goods, electronics, pharmaceutical and warehousing customers. It competes against established players GreyOrange and Addverb, as well as imported systems.
On funding, sources differ: Tracxn puts Hachidori's total raise at roughly $2.35 million, while the company has referenced a $3 million raise earmarked for product development, infrastructure and hiring.
Why founders should care
The near-simultaneous emergence of three separately funded robotics startups—each tackling a different hazardous or manual labor niche—may suggest growing investor appetite for Indian industrial automation, though the report offers no direct evidence of a broader funding trend beyond these three companies. Founders building physical automation products could plausibly view construction's low robot density (15-20 per 10,000 workers versus 600+ in manufacturing) as a signal of headroom, though how quickly that gap closes remains uncertain.
Unibose's pivot toward a robot-as-a-service model may indicate that hardware-heavy startups are exploring recurring-revenue structures to ease adoption friction—a pattern other capital-intensive hardware founders might watch closely. Certification milestones, like Unibose's ATEX Zone-0 status, could also signal that regulatory compliance itself is becoming a competitive moat in industrial hardware, not just a cost center.
At the same time, the discrepancies in Hachidori's reported funding figures are a reminder that inconsistent investor communication can create noise around a company's actual financial position—a risk founders should manage proactively as they scale disclosure practices.
Risks and open questions
None of the three companies has disclosed revenue, profitability, or unit economics, so the durability of their customer savings claims and business models remains unverified. Unibose's roughly $1 million in total funding looks thin relative to the capital intensity of certified industrial hardware and its stated international expansion plans, and its reliance on a small number of large industrial clients—IndianOil, CPCL, Borouge—concentrates revenue risk. Its shift to service-based pricing could also introduce new cash-flow and utilization challenges.
For Hachidori, competition from well-capitalized players like GreyOrange and Addverb, plus imported alternatives, could pressure market position even as headcount and patent portfolio grow. And construction's historically low robot adoption rate raises a genuine open question: does the low penetration reflect untapped opportunity, as these startups bet, or entrenched resistance to automation that could slow uptake regardless of proven cost and safety gains?