Raghavender Sahdev: 'We are keen on India as a production hub'

NuPort Robotics was co-founded in March 2019 by Raghavender Sahdev and Bao Xin Chen. Speaking about the recent partnership with EKA, the CEO and co-founder, in an exclusive interview with Nilesh Wadhwa, says the company aims to have a commercially viable deployment of autonomous driving technologies and it is open to partnerships with other OEMs too.

- Nilesh Wadhwa

'We understand that India is a very price-sensitive market and that is the reason we want to deploy our technology in the country. It forces us to keep our costs low and deploy at scale.'

Is your partnership with EKA an exclusive one? Or are you looking to work OEMs too?

Our partnership is not an exclusive one. However, EKA is our first client in India and we are also looking to work with other OEMs. It's a multi-year partnership during which NuPort and EKA will plan to work together to deploy level 2 autonomy in electric buses thereby leading to a safer transportation system. We will continue to develop partnerships with companies that have made that vision part of their mission.

What will be the tentative cost of adopting your technology and what’s the preferred model?

The tentative cost of adopting the technology would be a small percentage of the value of the truck/bus depending on the vehicle, level 2 autonomy features and scale of deployment for the given client. It will be a mixture of both one-time fee and a software as a service model.

What are your key learnings in the last few years?

We have learnt that solving challenges in transportation involves an entire ecosystem of partners and stakeholders. Some of our biggest achievements have been in developing partnerships with technology suppliers, tech providers, OEMs, trucking companies, retailers, regulators, government bodies, investors, insurance providers, research and academic institutions among others. We continue to work with our partners to collectively deploy our solutions at scale.

What are NuPort Robotics’ key offerings for the automotive industry?