Mitra
The robot that welcomed Ivanka Trump to India.
In one sentence
Mitra is a wheeled social robot designed in India for Indian customer-facing contexts — hospitals, hotels, retail floors.
The wow factor
Three things that make Mitra genuinely impressive.
Mitra speaks Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada — and switches between them mid-conversation.
It was the first robot to greet a sitting US presidential family member on Indian soil.
A standard Mitra deployment costs roughly one-third of an equivalent Pepper setup.
How it works
A step-by-step breakdown, in plain English.
- 1A face camera + microphone array detects the visitor.
- 2Mitra greets in the visitor's preferred language using a custom NLP stack.
- 3The wheeled base navigates indoor environments using lidar and pre-mapped floor plans.
- 4The chest tablet displays follow-up info — directions, menus, queue tokens.
Where you've probably seen it
Featured on India Today, Forbes India and the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit livestream.
The team behind it
Founded by Balaji Viswanathan in Bengaluru in 2016. The team includes former Wipro, IISc and IIT engineers.
The full story
Invento Robotics' Mitra is India's most-deployed indigenous social robot. Built entirely in Bengaluru, Mitra has shipped roughly 75 commercial units to Apollo Hospitals, Manipal Hospitals, Canara Bank, Singapore Changi Airport, and several Indian hotel chains. It speaks five Indian languages, uses a tablet-based face for emotional expression, and runs on a custom middleware on top of ROS.
Why you should care
Mitra is India's most-deployed indigenous robot. Built in Bengaluru by Invento Robotics, it's the answer to whether India can ship a real social robot — and the answer is yes.
The origin story
Invento Robotics was founded by Balaji Viswanathan in Bengaluru in 2016, focused on building social robots in India for Indian conditions. Mitra is the company's flagship — a wheeled service robot designed for hospitals, hotels, and retail.
The problem it solved
Indian hospitals and hotels can't afford the labour cost of dedicated greeters, queue managers and information desks. Mitra fills the gap with a friendly, screen-faced robot that recognises faces, holds short conversations, and guides visitors.
How it actually works
Mitra uses a tablet face for expressive emotion, a base with omnidirectional wheels, a microphone array for far-field voice and a camera for face recognition. The software stack runs on standard PC hardware with custom Invento middleware in Python and ROS.
The drama
It almost failed
Invento spent years searching for product-market fit — Mitra deployments were one-off pilots that rarely scaled. The pandemic temporarily destroyed the hospital greeting market that had been its main bet.
The breakthrough
Mitra was on stage at the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad — introducing PM Modi and Ivanka Trump. The visibility transformed Invento's profile and helped Mitra reach Apollo, Manipal, Singapore Changi Airport, and Canara Bank.
🇮🇳 India angle
India today: Mitra IS the India relevance. Designed in Bengaluru. Manufactured in India. Speaks Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada. Deployed across Indian healthcare and hospitality.
What India should learn: Mitra proves India can build a real commercial robot. The next step: indigenous components (vision chips, motor controllers, batteries) so the supply chain isn't just final assembly.
The wow facts
1
Mitra speaks five Indian languages and Mandarin Chinese.
2
Mitra was the first robot to formally welcome a sitting US presidential family member to India.
3
A standard Mitra deployment costs roughly one-third of an equivalent Pepper setup.
The legacy
Mitra is proof India can produce commercial robots — not just integrate imported ones. Every Indian robotics startup looks at Invento's playbook.
Economic impact
Invento has shipped ~75 Mitra units commercially as of 2024 — modest by global standards, but the largest indigenous Indian social-robot deployment ever.
Jobs affected
Mitra augments — not replaces — front-desk staff. It handles greeting, queue management and FAQs, leaving humans for the actual problem solving.
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Learn the science behind Mitra
Three Atlas entries that explain how Mitra actually works.
Mind-blowing facts
Mitra was named after the Sanskrit word for friend.
The original prototype was 3D-printed in a Bengaluru apartment.
Invento Robotics has bootstrapped to break-even — almost unheard of for a hardware startup.