Flo Mobility has raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round co-led by Mela Ventures and Arali Ventures, with participation from ARTPARK, VentureGarage, JITO Incubation & Innovation Foundation, and DEVX Ventures, to scale its autonomous construction robotics business across India and into international markets.
The Bengaluru-based startup — founded in 2021 by Manesh Jain (CEO) and Pratik Patel (COO) — builds what it calls Physical AI solutions for the construction sector: autonomous mobile robots designed to handle material movement and site workflows across large, unstructured project environments.
Flo Mobility’s flagship product, the Flo Hauler, is a battery-powered autonomous robot capable of transporting loads up to 1.5 tonnes across construction sites, including multi-floor operations, in harsh outdoor conditions and constantly shifting layouts. The company claims deployments at more than 25 sites, with the total robot fleet exceeding 60 units across 10 states. Clients include L&T Construction, Godrej Properties, Sobha, Embassy Group, Capacité Infra, and KEC International.
The reported outcomes are striking: clients cite roughly 45% cost savings on material movement, 50% faster material transport, and a 67% reduction in site accidents — figures that, if they hold across broader deployments, make a compelling case for automation in a sector that has been deeply resistant to it.
Manesh Jain framed the raise around a systems diagnosis rather than a labour replacement argument:
“The construction industry has been operating the same way for decades, with enormous amounts of labour dedicated to simply moving materials from one place to another. That’s not a people problem; it’s a systems problem. Flo Mobility was built to solve it. Our robots do not replace the skilled labour that builds India’s cities — they free that labour to do the work that matters. This funding gives us the firepower to scale our deployments, build more robots, and expand internationally. We’ve proven the model. Now we’re going to take it to every major construction market in the world.”
— Manesh Jain, Co-Founder & CEO, Flo Mobility
The structural problem is well-documented. Construction employs over 270 million people globally but deploys just 15–20 robots per 10,000 workers — a fraction of the 600-plus deployed in automotive manufacturing. India’s construction boom makes the gap particularly acute: labour shortages are increasingly structural rather than cyclical, and project delays due to material handling bottlenecks remain endemic.
Also Read: This Indian Startup Built a Farm Robot to Solve Labour Shortages – And It Just Won a Global Award
Flo Mobility will use the fresh capital to scale manufacturing of its robots, advance its vertical AI and autonomy stack, expand deployments across India, grow the engineering team, and make its first moves into international markets — particularly the Middle East, where large-scale construction activity and labour cost pressures create a natural fit.
Co-founder Pratik Patel pointed to the moment on-site that still anchors the company’s mission:
“When we first walked onto a construction site with our robot, the reaction from site teams was immediate — they saw materials moving autonomously to the right floor, to the right zone, without anyone pushing a wheelbarrow. That moment still drives us. We’ve built the hardware, the AI, and the go-to-market from the ground up. With this capital, we will expand our engineering team, double down on product development for automating more use cases, and cement Flo Mobility’s position as the defining robotics platform for construction.”
— Pratik Patel, Co-Founder & COO, Flo Mobility
The round follows an earlier seed investment from JIIF in late 2024, and the participation of ARTPARK — the AI and Robotics Technology Park backed by IISc Bengaluru and the Government of India — signals growing institutional credibility for the startup’s technology thesis.
