HINDU BUSINESS LINE: Hyderabad-based Grene Robotics is planning to raise $15 million in a Series A funding. It has initiated discussions with several capital funds, large business houses and crowd-funding firms.

“Ideally we would like to raise about $15 million, but depending on investor interests it could be more. We can even go up to $30 million. We are looking at raising funds, mostly growth capital, by April,” Grene Robotics Founder and CEO Kiran Raju told BusinessLine. “The funds will be largely utilised for customer acquisition to raise the order book up to $55 million,” he added, but declined to name the funds before deals are signed. Grene Robotics had so far invested $6 million raised from family and friends and others, including serial entrepreneur and investor Jay Krishnan. The company is also planning immediate forays into countries such as Singapore, the US, Africa and the UK, for which also a part of the funding would be used. The company’s flagship product GreneOS is a unified Operating System that would be a replacement to enterprise systems in Fortune 1000 companies and Government offices across the world. GreneOS will be able to manage connected robots to maximum efficiency autonomously. Kiran Raju, who had worked on building autonomous systems for Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) while doing his Masters at Carnegie Mellon University, was the co-founder of energy efficiency company Valence Energy. Valence Energy was later acquired by US-based Serious Materials, which is now called Serious Energy. His second venture, SA Habitat, which was into housing and real estate, got merged with a partner company in 2010.

Source – Hindu Business Line