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Cron AI — a deep-tech startup building a 3D data edge perception platform — on Tuesday said it raised $4 million (about Rs 29.3 crore) in the Series A round led by VenturEast and Kitaki Ventures. Existing investor YourNest Venture Capital also participated in the round.

The startup will use the funding to accelerate the delivery of senseEDGE™ — a sensor-agnostic 3D data perception platform — which aims to address the requirements of 3D sensing, perception, and processing in new markets.

The technology is said to be in advanced stages of development, with test kits already set to be shipped to customers in the second half of 2021.

Founded by Tushar Chhabra and Saurav Agarwala in 2015, Cron AI has developed a platform that enables innovators to develop intelligent solutions using 3D sensors to accurately perceive and learn the real world.

Speaking about the funding, Tushar Chhabra, Co-founder and CEO, Cron AI, said,

“The 3D sensing and automated systems markets are moving towards moon-shot growth as evidenced by the recent successful SPACs across the value chain. This new investment demonstrates the confidence our investors have in our approach and vision towards becoming the heart of an autonomous future.”

“We are now poised towards global expansion to deliver truly adaptive perception to innovators and allow them to accelerate productisation, mitigate time, and investment risks, and bring standardisation to an extremely fragmented market,” he added.

Srikanth Sundararajan, General Partner, VenturEast, said,

“There is a high demand for deep learning deployment on the edge for real-time data inferencing, including 3D image extraction. Many industries are rapidly shifting away from the traditional centralised cloud model to the compute at the edge. Our investment thesis on this space is strong, thus we were keen to invest in Cron AI with their specific focus on edge computing and differentiated IP as it relates to perception technology.”

“We have seen Cron AI grow from strength to strength over the last few years as a sharply focussed DeepTech and AI platform, bringing 3D perception to reality through senseEDGE™. As a fully developed edge compute platform, it will fast track the adoption of 3D perception across multiple use cases globally,” said Girish Shivani, ED and Fund Manager, YourNest Venture Capital.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)