Self-driving car startup Minus Zero has raised $1.7 million in seed round led by Chiratae Ventures. The company plans to get its first vehicle on the road by late 2022 to early 2023. The Bengaluru-based startup uses a combination of camera-based vision and algorithms for its self-driving solution. Minus Zero -- India's first startup building affordable fully self-driving cars in India -- has raised $1.7 million in seed round led by Chiratae Ventures. JITO Angel Network, a few senior executives from American chipmaker NVIDIA and US-based ride hailing service Lyft that competes with Uberalso participated in the round.

"Even primitive autonomous technology that exists today is better than an average human driver on the road" Recent moves by big players signal at the potential of India's AV ecosystem. Tata Elxsi has created a full-stack IP called AutonomAI to accelerate programs for AVs, and Intel's decision to gather data on traffic patterns to create algorithms to be used in India and overseas for autonomous driving. Moreover, a large number of AV startups have come up the ladder, especially in the last six years, namely: Swaayatt (2015), AutoNxt (2016), Ati Motors and Flux Auto (2017), Flo Mobility (2019), Minus Zero (2020) etc. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) startups in India, including Swaayatt Robots, Ati Motors, Netradyne, have raised substantial funding recently. Saurabh Chandra, Co-Founder, Ati Motors, said: "There is a confluence of factors due to the pandemic: workforce management has become challenging, prices are rising, making automation more attractive while technology is getting better and cheaper. There is an explosion of demand in the eCommerce space that can't be addressed by simply adding people; technology is the only way to handle the scale." India is a huge market.