Robotics start-up Miko raised ₹23 crore in a pre-series B round led by Stride Ventures. Existing investors including Chiratae Ventures, YourNest Venture Capital and a group of angel investors, led by former Nasscom chairman Keshav Murugesh, also participated in the round.
Stride aims to be a strategic partner in the company’ through its customized offerings and relationships across banks and corporates.
Founded five years back, Miko was created by three IIT Bombay graduates, Sneh R Vaswani, Prashant Iyengar and Chintan Raikar. After the success of their first generation of Miko robot, the company launched Miko 2, a robot that can see, hear, sense, express, talk, recognise faces, remember names, identify moods, initiate a conversation and learn from its own environment to intuitively develop a bond with a child. Miko 2 addresses a complex need-gap of education, technology, entertainment and hence an enabler of ineffective parenting, claims the company.
“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. We are on track to surpass the 100,000-user mark in the coming quarters with Miko,” said Sneh R Vaswani, co-founder and CEO, Miko.
The startup has scaled up its user base across 90 countries, including the US. The company saw over 20% month-on-month growth in engagement during the pandemic surpassing 70 million interactions on its platform. Demand also increased with parents looking for an alternative to screens for their kids.
Ishpreet Gandhi, founder & managing partner, Stride Ventures said, “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 (internet of things).”
Since its inception, Stride Ventures has focused on investing in growth-stage startups that have the potential to disrupt through innovation and technology across sectors. The investment in Miko also highlights Stride’s preference for homegrown startups that have shown strong company fundamentals. Stride Ventures launched its maiden fund in 2019 with a target corpus of ₹500 crore and plans to invest in 35-40 startups over the next 3 years.
