The Soul
of an
Automaton
The Founding Team at Ati Motors came together in 2017 to build a materials movement robot ground up.
Saurabh tasted success at Talisma and Neev, navigating the stormy path to growing a startup and merging with a large corporation.
Vinay had transitioned from a career in academia to entrepreneurship to set up Strand Life Sciences at the turn of the century. He also founded Picopeta, which built the Simputer, a pioneering alternative to personal computers. He brought architectural vision and maturity to the team.
Saad, a prodigy Vinay mentored since he was 11, had an appetite for engineering and imagination that knew no bounds.
Ati Motors founders built an interdisciplinary team of mechanical, electronics, control, perception, and AI engineers that worked on a bottoms-up, first-principles approach to craft a unique bot that was inspired by developments in public road autonomy. Sherpa was born to automate material movement in factories and warehouses – indoors and outdoors.
The machine was ready by 2019 and the team got the first paid deployment when Covid struck. The company worked with great creativity through the pandemic, using feedback from the first application to refine the product with successive field trials, while creating infrastructure to support remote support.
As Covid lifted, Ati Motors raised a Pre Series A, build a Field Operations Team, and deployed bots in India, at challenging customer sites.
“I am proud to have mentored a team that created a world-first product in an effort entirely conducted in Bangalore”, says Vinay, “The team has matured and gained competence and confidence in every aspect of the design.”
“Autonomous vehicles are going to be the future, not only on the road but in factories and warehouses as well. The technology we’ve built at Ati, puts us in the right position to be a part of that change,” says Saad.
Saurabh adds, with pride, “With ten customers using Sherpas in India, we decided to add North America to our focus, raise money and build an experienced engineering team to make Sherpa ready for deployment in world-class manufacturing and eCommerce facilities”.
