You sit in your car, after a long day at your 9 to 5, it’s a Friday and you can't wait to go home and snuggle into your bed under your blanket. But since you live in India and your workplace is a whole hour’s drive away - and that really cramps your daydream.
What do Patiala and self-driving cars have in common?
You sit in your car, after a long day at your 9 to 5, it’s a Friday and you can't wait to go home and snuggle into your bed under your blanket. But since you live in India and your workplace is a whole hour’s drive away - and that really cramps your daydream. Well, this might not be a problem for long.
Minus Zero is a Jalandhar-based start-up, run by Gagandeep Reehal and Gursimran Kalra. And its main mission is to build a network of affordable fully self-driving electric cars in India. And it is a testament to the task they’ve undertaken - they’re the first company to build such a network.
Minus Zero is gearing up to bring a network of self-driving cars to India very soon. And as most of us would know, traffic in India is a genre of its own - who better to solve it than people who have faced it their whole life? They’ve raised about 1.7 million USD in funding from tech and VC giants like Nvidia and Chiratae, most of which they use in the intensive R&D they do for their cars.
Cars designed by Minus Zero do not rely on LIDARS (Light detection and Ranging Sensors) - in fact, they are much closer to a human than you would imagine. They use a mix of cameras and AI to weave their way through Indian traffic. Essentially, their software takes camera input (seeing), uses intuitive algorithms to predict changes on the road (thinking) and then finally acts on these predictions.
The company was established during the pandemic in 2020 - and is currently employing a workforce of over 25 employees. Their current headquarters are in Bengaluru and they are set to start pre-orders for their cars in the latter half of 2023. They’ve tested their software in real-time on roads to see how it performs.
Having graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce and still pursuing his Bachelor’s at Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology (respectively), the founders of Minus Zero (Gagandeep and Gursimran), Minus Zero is a story of solving a uniquely Indian problem and we are excited to see how the story unfolds!