Robotics deep-tech startup CynLr on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 5.5 crore ($778,900) in its seed round of funding led by venture capital firms Speciale Invest and Arali Ventures.

Early stage investor GrowX Ventures, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), which is the technology business incubator of IIM Ahmedabad, and Vijay Kedia, also participated in the funding round, said CynLr in a statement.

The company, which is owned and operated by Vyuti Systems Pvt. Ltd, will use the funds to drive research and development (R&D) and to boost adoption of its product, it added.

CynLr was founded in 2015 by Gokul N A and Nikhil Ramaswamy, who were colleagues at test and automation company National Instruments. The startup is building visual object intelligence for industrial robots. It seeks to provide manufacturing companies with a universal machine-vision-enabled robot platform that can handle objects as well as humans do. Manufacturers can deploy CynLr's platform without having to worry about custom designed fixtures and positioning systems, which are currently mandatory for every robot deployment.

Since its inception, the company has executed over 30 custom engineered, machine-vision-based robotic solutions for its customers, it said.

“We believe that CynLr’s approach of bringing together machine vision and artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly enhance object intelligence for industrial robots, thus paving the way for greater penetration of robotics application across various industry segments," said Rajiv Raghunandan, managing partner, Arali Ventures.

Investors

Speciale Invest is a $15 million seed-stage fund started in 2017 by Travel Yari co-founder Arjun Rao and former Ventureast principal Vishesh Rajaram.

The focus areas of the fund include deep-tech products in the areas of enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), health-tech, fintech, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

Its other investments include Scapic Innovations Pvt. Ltd, a VR and AR platform, and Frontdesk AI, a startup which offers automated customer service software.

Arali Ventures had marked the first close of its debut seed fund last year, VCCircle reported. CynLr is the venture capital firm's first-known investment.