'Our vision is to innovate as many products as we can and solve as many problems as possible.'
In India, manual scavenging is prohibited under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
Does that mean there are no scavengers in this country?
In fact, under the NAMASTE (National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) scheme, 84,902 sewer and septic tank workers have been identified across 36 states and Union territories.
And 1,313 sewer and septic tank deaths were reported between 1993 and June 2025.
In 2024 alone, at least 116 manual scavengers lost their lives.
Why am I talking about manual scavenging when the story is about entrepreneurship?
The reason behind the birth of Genrobotics, a start-up based in Kerala is a very talked about death of a sanitation worker in the state.
At that time, the founders of Genrobotics -- Vimal Govind MK, Nikhil NP, Rashid K, and Arun George -- were just students of engineering.
Vimal Govind, the CEO talks about how they became social entrepreneurs.
"We are blessed to have socially driven people like Anand Mahindra, Sridhar Vembu, etc as our investors," Vimal Govind tells Rediff's Shobha Warrier.
Four engineering students meet on a social service platform.
I will not say we were a group of four engineering students with big dreams. But we did involve ourselves in various social activities like visiting old age homes and solving their problems as best as we could.
It was during these visits that the four of us bonded, mainly because of what we believed in.
That made us think; instead of doing small things, why not use our engineering skills to do something big for society.
First innovation: a Robotic Exo-skeleton for defence
We first zeroed in on defence as the area to work on. That was because my father was in the army, and I had heard him talk about some of the problems they faced. For example, soldiers had to carry a lot of weight, sometimes very heavy equipment on their back while they move from one point to another.
What we designed was a robotic weight-carrying machine called Exo-skeleton which soldiers could keep on their body. Then it would be the Exo-skeleton that would bear the weight of the equipment they had to carry, and not their back.
At the seminar by the American Society for Research in Singapore, ours was chosen as one of the best research papers out of all the papers from the US, China, Japan, etc.
After we won an award, our technology was written about by even the international media. That was our first taste of recognition.
With this, we became recognised as a good group that was working in the field of robotics.
We were still studying at that time.
After we passed out in 2016, we continued to work this technology to improve it further.
Even in 2017, we were making Exo-skeleton better and better.
We were just working as a group, and we had not started the start up as we had no clarity on whether we wanted to commercialise the product.
It was more of a robotic passion project for us.
A manual scavenging death changes the course of direction.
Then came a news that shocked the entire Kerala. It was the deaths of two people who were manually cleaning a manhole along with an auto driver who tried to rescue them.
Then appeared a photo in a newspaper of a man inside a manhole with sewage water till his neck while he cleaned a drain in the capital of Kerala.
Because it created a political storm in Kerala, the Kerala Start Up Mission invited ideas that could stop manual scavenging.
The very fact that such barbarous practices continued when technology had advanced so much, made us feel that this needed the immediate attention of all innovators.
We were working in a field like defence, and moving from such a top industry to sanitation was a not a difficult call for us to make.
All of us felt that what the sanitation industry faced could be solved by technology and as innovators, it was our duty to do something.
From man-hole to robot-hole: Creating a robot to clean the drainage system.
The message we wanted to send out was, change man-hole to robot-hole.
That was how the Mission Robot-hole started.
When our idea of a robot to clean the drainage system was approved by the Kerala Start Up Mission in 2017, they provided us the space to work on the product.
Start Up Mission also insisted that we launched a start-up for them to support us.
That was how we became entrepreneurs and registered our start up under the name Genrobotics.
The name came from our work on Exo-skeleton. We used to name each model as Generation1, Generation2, etc. So, it is from there that the 'Gen' part came. Then, of course, we were working in the field of robotics.
Through the Start Up Mission, we could connect to the Sewage Board which was under the State Water Authority. They arranged for us to examine the entire sewage system and the manholes in many places in Kerala.
Once we understood the problems and technicalities involved, we started building a product.
One of the biggest problems we faced while designing was, as the entry of the manhole was a very constrained space, we could only drop a robot, the diameter of which had to be quite small.
But once inside, though the space is very constrained again, it had to do a lot of cleaning activities. So, once inside, the size had to be expanded to higher dimensions.
We had to look at many variables too as there are different types of manholes- circular, rectangular, oval shaped, etc.
Then the man who goes inside carries with him many tools to work. So, the robot also had to have all the tools.
Once it gathers waste, it had to be brought up.
These were some of the challenges we had to overcome while creating the robot.
What we did was, we bootstrapped the control system, manoeuvrability, movements etc. from our earlier work on Exo-skeleton. Then we added the other requirements specific to the cleaning work.
In one year, we came out with a beta product which we deployed to the Water Authority Department, and it was only then they got interested. Till then, they were not very enthusiastic.
By 2019, we could come out with a good, fully stable product and we named it Bandicoot.
You can say, Bandicoot is the world's first Robotic Scavenger!
We first made it in aluminium but later we moved carbon fibre, thus reducing the weight of the robot considerably.
The chief minister of Kerala launched it because the Start Up Mission and Water Authority wanted it.
Soon after the CM launched it, we started getting calls from all over the country.
By 2020, other states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra, etc also started using the product.
Our presence in different states connected us to the Swatch Bharat Mission.
After the Haryana launch of Bandicoot, the finance minister spoke about our product in the Budget speech, and said, the government's mission was Manhole to Machine hole.
That lead to an all India launch by the prime minister of India on the 2nd of October.
Bandicoot became the first product we started selling.
Then, we added more variants of Bandicoot, like Wilboar (for cleaning and inspection of industrial and other spaces like big tanks, wells, canals, culverts and closed drains), G-Spider (mainly for canal cleaning), Genbot, etc.
From Robotic scavenger to medical robots.
Then came the pandemic. And we had no other choice but sit idle at home.
No deployment of our scavenger products or sales.
That was when we thought of diversifying our portfolio.
We decided to enter the medical industry and put all our resources into developing the technology.
The result was G-Gaiter, an extension of our first product, Exo-Skeleton. It is a treadmill based robotic platform targeted at people who are unable to walk due to stroke or spinal cord injury due to accident.
Here, the Exo-skeleton will be connected to the human leg of the disabled person, and then the Exo-Skeleton would start walking on the treadmill which would slowly start sending signal to the brain. This is part of their recovery and are now used in hospitals.
We launched G-Gaiter soon after the pandemic.
The journey from 4 to 400
It all began with just the four of us engineering students.
Today, 400 people work for Genrobotics.
We have four plants -- three in Palakkad and one in Thiruvananthapuram-= 00 and two more under construction.
We have two active verticals -- sanitation and medical. The defence vertical where everything began also has become active now. We also have an inspection wing and a software division.
We operate in 19 states and 3 Union Territories. Our presence is there in the ASEAN countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, etc., in the Middle East and in the African region.
When we started out with only passion, and without any business in mind, we never thought we would grow so big. Many people look at this attitude as weakness but that is the truth.
A journey of solving problems.
Our passion is robotics. Our mission is to solve problems in society. So, our journey is not an entrepreneurial journey. Rather, it is a journey of solving problems.
We took the decision to move to entrepreneurship when we realised that was the best way to take our effort to people.
Next came the realisation that entrepreneurship could sustain many people, and through the entrepreneurial platform, we could come out with more and more innovations.
In fact, these days people come to us with new innovation requirements. If we can, we do it.
I would say, what we are undertaking is a natural journey.
IMAGE: Genrobotics Co-founder Vimal Govind.Future of robotics: Humanity needs robotics
The future of robotics is wide and immense, and it is not just a requirement of India, but the entire world needs it.
Humanity needs robotics.
Our vision is to innovate as many products as we can and solve as many problems as possible. And we want to make them for the entire world.
As we cruised along, we realised that we would not be able to solve problems unless we looked into the business aspect.
We know that we are is not the investor-friendly or entrepreneurship friendly field.
We are also in the B2G (Business to Government) sector where payments from the government side takes long. That's why though we are a profitable company, we have look for other investments for sustainability. We are blessed to have socially driven people like Anand Mahindra, Sridhar Vembu, etc as our investors. There are VCs like Anil Joshi, Unicorn India Angels, also onboard.
The advantage of working with the government is, we can solve societal problems.
Rewarding moments
Though we face so many hurdles on the way, never once did we think of not doing what we are doing.
It is our passion for hardware, and the realisation that what we are doing has a purpose that inspire us in our journey.
The changes our products create in society is the driving force.
It is this wealth that is more valuable, more valuable than the financial wealth.
Last year we made Rs 30 crore revenue and this year, our target is Rs 100 crore.
But what matters to us is not the profit we make, not the revenue we make, not the industry we are in but the social wealth we are creating.
But nothing can be comparable to see the satisfied smile on the face of a person who made a few steps with the help of G-gaiter, a person who never thought he would be able to walk even one step.
It is so rewarding to see people coming from other countries to take treatment using the product we created.
I would say, all the moments in our journey so far, are satisfying and inspirational as we did not expect or hope for anything.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff
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