Hyderabad-based Vistan NextGen, a deep tech solutions start-up to introduce Robot-As-A-Service (RaaS) in the country to help companies reduce cost of ownership.

The firm, signed pact with third party players for manufacturing of ‘Flunkey’ brand of robots, will begin commercial sales post Pongal season. It will also make robots available under RaaS.

The robots will cater to the needs of sectors such as healthcare, retail, hospitality, education and banking. The firm said the robots would be handy for oganisations in handling their customers in the times of Covid-19 pandemic.

“We have two vendors that have booked robots. We will be making 55-60 robots ready in the next few weeks for sales and also for RaaS offerings,” Rama Raju Singam, Founder of Vistan NextGen, has said.

The company will seek the Telangana government’s help to set up a manufacturing facility by March.

Rama Raju said the company had invested £1 million so far in developing the product. It has about 75 employees, including 50 at the Innovation Centre in Hyderabad.

He said the firm was also working on developing a humanoid. “It will be ready by June 2021,” he said.

“We will roll out robots in the next one year, custom designed not only for varied social, service and industrial work, but also for numerous consumer interface tasks,” he said.

While the Sushruth Robot will help patients book appointments and pay consultation fee, Nightingale Robot acts as a nursing assistant, taking basic readings of temperature, heartbeat, respiratory rate and blood oxygen level.