Jul 29, 2020

Arcatron Mobility, a startup which has created a smart wheelchair, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in its seed funding round from Sudhir Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director of Pune-based Pinnacle Industries, along with angel investor Anoop Hingorani. According to the report from VCCircle , the amount of funding raised in this round will be used by the company for product development, and research and development. ADVERTISEMENT Founded in June 2015 by NIT Calicut alumni Laxmikant Banjarey, Kunal Kamble, Ganesh Sonawane and Dewaj Baruah, the Pune-based startup has not yet launched its product. However, it participated in the Surge Conference, that took place in Bangalore on 23th and 24th February and won $1,00,000 in free credits for Google’s cloud platform. The company is working on a smart wheelchair, which it claims to be India’s first shower and commode wheelchair designed to ease the process of using the restroom and taking a bath. It is named Arcatron SAS100, and will be an attendant propelled wheelchair designed for senior citizens and individuals with limited mobility. It is also water and corrosion resistant and can be fitted into a car. A base variant of the wheelchair, meant mainly for the elderly, will be priced around Rs 8,000. The premium smart wheelchair version, that will assist the partially immobilised and paraplegics, is expected to cost around Rs 16,000. For the commercial production of its smart wheelchair, the company has tied up with a manufacturing partner. According to Laxmikant Banjarey, India has the second largest population of elderly citizens at 110 million and this number is projected to reach 158.7 million by 2025. By 2050, it is expected to surpass the population of children below 14 years. He said: There is a lot of assistive technology present in the West to improve the quality of life and independence for the elderly and the immobilised. We want to reinvent the concept of assisted living here. Share this: