India does not build the robots it uses.
From the machines on factory floors to the automation creeping into hospitals and warehouses, the hardware is overwhelmingly imported, which makes it expensive to buy, slow to service, and out of reach for most of the businesses that could use it.
iHUB Robotics, founded in Ernakulam, Kochi, in 2022, is trying to close that gap by building humanoid robots in India from the ground up: the chassis, the embedded systems, and the AI that drives them.
The company took seven years to arrive.
Athil Krishna, Akhil K Haridasan and Sarath S, three friends from Kerala, began researching humanoid robots in 2018 while studying mechatronics in Coimbatore, at a point when the Indian ecosystem could barely support the work.
