Sramana Mitra: Who’s paying? Ritukar Vijay: The concessionaire, airport, and end customer. End customers are paying for convenience. They don’t have to pay any tips. Sramana Mitra: Are you making your revenue from the airport payments or concessionaires? Ritukar Vijay: All three of them. We are the single point of contact with the consumer where
Sramana Mitra: Six months later after you got all the feedback and incorporated all the feedback, was there a big check? Ritukar Vijay: It was a monthly subscription. We did a contract of a rolling window of six months. Sramana Mitra: What kind of pricing structure did you set up? Ritukar Vijay: It was around
Sramana Mitra: What happened with Cincinnati airport after the one-month pilot? You now have some money to fix the usability issues. What were the commercials on that? Ritukar Vijay: We were focusing on Robotics-as-a-Service model. There’s a fixed subscription for each month. These robots will perform deliveries. There’s potential revenue share. There was a lot
Sramana Mitra: What was the use case for Cincinnati Airport? Ritukar Vijay: To deliver goods. After the security check-in, there are gate-hugger personas. There are people who just fly off after the departure gate. We are not participating in any of the retail activities at the airport. 2020 was a time when the aviation industry
Sramana Mitra: How did you find your co-founder? Ritukar Vijay: One of the co-founders was in my college in the Robotics club. That goes back more than 15 years. The other two guys, we met through our careers during 2010 to 2012. Sramana Mitra: In the robotics company?
This is a very interesting story of bringing really complex technology from India to the global market with a complex sales cycle. The long term potential is huge. The short term complexity of the business is equally huge. The founding team is doing an admirable job navigating the opportunity with commitment and resolve.