Bengaluru-based Armatrix has kicked off a seed round worth Rs 67.28 crore, led by UK-based Crane Venture Partners. The deeptech robotics startup builds snake-like arms that inspect and maintain industrial equipment in spaces too tight or hazardous for people to enter.
Crane Venture Partners has put Rs 40 crore into the round, while existing investor pi Ventures has added Rs 15 crore. Other participants include gradCapital, Boundless Ventures, Inuka Capital and new investor NKSquared, alongside individual investors.
The round is still open, so the total may rise further in later tranches. That detail matters for readers, because the Rs 67.28 crore figure reflects the capital raised so far rather than a closed final total.
What the new money backs
The fresh capital will support business expansion and general corporate purposes as Armatrix moves from prototype work toward wider industrial use. That is a practical next step for a hardware company, where each deployment needs engineering time, testing and close work with a customer site.
Armatrix was founded in 2024 by Vishrant Dave, Prateesh Awasthi and Ayush Ranjan, three engineers from IIT Kanpur. Dave serves as chief executive, and the team has stayed focused on one problem since its campus days, which is how to reach inside industrial assets without sending a person in.
How the snake arm works
The arm is designed to reach three to five metres and measure only 50 to 150 millimetres across, with more than 22 points of movement. That slim, flexible shape lets it thread through twisting internal spaces that a rigid industrial robot cannot reach.
All motors, electronics and computing sit in a separate actuator box outside the arm body, rather than inside the arm itself. Armatrix says this external design helps the arm work in explosive, flooded, irradiated and extreme temperature settings.
The arm enters through existing manholes, nozzles and access ports, so an asset does not need to be taken apart for an inspection. Modular end effectors then let one deployment handle visual inspection, painting or welding, which cuts downtime for the customer.
Control is handled in real time using reinforcement learning, with the operator setting a goal while the arm adapts to complex internal shapes. The company also uses digital twin simulations to plan paths before the arm moves inside an asset.
Where the arm will work first
Armatrix is targeting shipbuilding and marine work, oil and gas, aerospace and nuclear energy, where inspection and maintenance still often depend on human entry into confined spaces. Those jobs can require shutdowns and scaffolding, which add cost and delay to routine maintenance.
The company puts the scale of that problem plainly on its own site. It says 53 percent of shipbuilding and heavy industry maintenance tasks occur in confined spaces where no human should go, and it points to a projected global robotics maintenance market of 150 billion dollars by 2032.
From a campus idea to industrial pilots
The idea began at IIT Kanpur, where the founders studied hyper redundant manipulators after encountering Canadarm, the robotic arm used on the International Space Station. They returned to India with a simple question, which was why similar snake-like robots were not used on the ground.
Early support followed in stages, including a gradCapital fellowship, a 1.5 metre prototype and a grant from Emergent Ventures. Armatrix later completed a three metre advanced arm, which it calls MVP 01, and was selected among the top eight Indian companies by Shell E4 in October 2025.
Armatrix won the Best on Campus category at The Economic Times Startup Awards 2026. In September 2026, the company said it was targeting 10 to 12 pilots over the next six months, with commercial deployments planned for the first half of 2028, and four pilots in the immediate pipeline.
Why investors are backing this now
Crane Venture Partners is a London-based investor focused on inception to seed stage founders building foundational technologies. Its portfolio spans robotics, artificial intelligence systems, infrastructure software and deep science, which fits a company selling a new form of industrial access.
pi Ventures has backed Armatrix since its earlier 2.1 million dollar pre-seed round, alongside Inuka Capital, Boundless Ventures, Boost VC, Turbostart and gradCapital. That continuity matters, because deeptech hardware needs patient capital while a prototype moves toward paid pilots and commercial use.
The same pattern is visible in other Indian deeptech hardware stories, where campus research moves into pilot production before a wider commercial launch. KeeVurds recently covered Viridian Ingni Propulsion, a Chennai deeptech startup building electric propulsion systems in house, in a similar early stage funding story.
If the pilots perform as planned, Armatrix will have a clear path from a working three metre arm to a wider range of industrial jobs. The seed round gives the team room to prove that path with real customers, rather than only in a laboratory.
