Nocca Robotics Pvt. Ltd, a waterless robotic cleaning solution provider, has raised Rs 12.4 crore ($1.67 million) from the early-stage IAN Fund, with participation from prominent angel investors of Indian Angel Network (IAN).
The Pune-based startup will use the funds to manufacture waterless robots with improved quality apart from enhancing research and development, and production, IAN Fund said in a statement.
Harshit Rathore, chief technical officer at Nocca Robotics, said the firm’s waterless and shareable robotic solar panel cleaning solution enables plant owners to operate at peak efficiency while generating attractive ROIs by curbing unnecessary spends on manual cleaning and increasing the power generation.
Nocca Robotics, which was founded in April 2017 by IIT Kanpur alumni Harshit Rathore and Nikhil Kurele, provides waterless robotic cleaning solution to utility solar park developers and large rooftop installation companies in India.
The startup was an incubatee company of Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre at IIT Kanpur. After the launch of the startup, other members Ajeet Chansuriya, Mayur Chate and Samar Ahmed also soon joined.
Saurabh Srivastava, controlling and designated partner at IAN Fund, said that the startup is well poised to leverage the government’s focus on scaling the country’s solar power generation capacity to 100 gigawatt (GW) by 2020.
“Its innovative, tech-based, unique solution will address the auxiliary challenges associated with solar energy operations,” he added.
Earlier in May, another startup engaged in solar panel cleaning also raised funding. Noida-based startup Skilancer Solar Pvt. Ltd raised funds from Alfa Ventures, a proprietary fund launched by angel investor Dhianu Das.
IAN Fund
The fund announced its first close at Rs 175 crore (around $27 million) in April 2017. Earlier this year, it raised the targeted corpus and said it was looking to make the final close soon.
The investments from the fund made public this year include cataloguing startup Flatpebble, local discovery platform Little Black Book and data analytics firm Clootrack.
Last year, the fund invested in waterless personal hygiene startup Clensta, fin-tech startup Propelld and farm-to-fork marketplace FarmersFZ.
