Mitra: The ‘Made in India’ robot that stole the show at GES Hyderabad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adviser to US President Donald Trump Ivanka Trump on Tuesday inaugurated the three-day Global Entrepreneur Summit in Hyderabad by pressing a button on an indigenously developed robot called Mitra.

Mitra has been developed by a Bangalore-based startup Invento Robotics that was set up in October 2015. The company has been founded by Balaji Viswanathan, who has previously worked in Silicon Valley and technology companies such as Microsoft. Viswanathan was recently in news for being the most followed person on Quora.

The company has been closely working with National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM)

"Mitra has been completely designed and developed in India. The idea behind the robot was to provide customised and contextual information to people," Kaundinya Panyam, a senior company executive told Hindustan Times.

Featuring fibre glass body, the humanoid comes with a touchscreen on its chest which comes in handy when there's a lot of ambience noise, the executive said. On a single charge, Mitra can deliver a back up of 8-10 hours.

Invento said it has deployed a fully functional robot at a Canara Bank in Bangalore.

While the company is pushing the device primarily as a smart customer support assistance, it also sees other various use cases as well. For instance, the robot could be used as a party photographer, smart DJ or just a live tweeter.

Mitra also features a facial recognition technology which the company says is quite accurate, allowing the robot to quickly identify the person and deliver the customised services.

The humanoid also understands multiple languages. At the moment, Mitra supports Kannada and English but the company says it is soon going to add support for Hindi as well.

"Our robots can recognize speech in multiple languages and engage customers with smart conversations to provide better customer engagement and increase sales," said the company on its website.