How EyeROV Is Taking India Through The Unchartered Waters Of Marine Robotics

Deep beneath the sea, an industry has prospered over the years, driving thousands of skilled personnel who dare the waves to take a deep dive to secure oil and gas infrastructure, maintain underwater pipelines, and various climatic activities. 

Commercial diving is today an $8.50 Bn global industry, growing at 3.91% a year to reach $11.12 Bn by 2032, but it never ceased to haunt the divers, claiming up to 18 lives out of every 10,000 taking the plunge every year. While battling ocean currents and low visibility under the water, the divers encounter an increasing atmospheric pressure that can cause barotrauma or decompression sickness while ascending too fast or nitrogen narcosis that distorts their mental state and judgement at depths beyond 30-40 m. 

Hydropower or oil and gas infrastructure is often installed as deep as 100-120 m underwater or even more. Any damage to the structure can result in power disruptions or environmental hazards. This makes executing undersea inspections and repairs more critical, exposing the divers to extreme risks. 

If humanoids could replace humans in such extreme conditions, lives could be saved. The thought had prompted Johns T Mathai and Kannappa Palaniappan P to work on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). They went on to set up EyeROV in Kochi back in 2016 to develop robots for undersea inspections. The startup raised ₹10 Cr ($1.2 Mn) in pre-Series A round in 2024, led by AWE Funds and Unicorn India Ventures. 

Marine robotics deeptech startups like EyeROV attained greater importance with the $3.5 Bn global subsea maintenance services market averaging a 13.5% growth rate to reach $11 Bn by 2032 and India emerging as a major player in this entire orchestration. 

EyeROV is not the only one going deep down with its robots. The government’s push for ‘Make in India’ technologies has also fostered the growth of companies like Xera Robotics and Planys Technologies heightening competition in India’s $108.86 Mn undersea robotics market that’s likely to reach $309.60 Mn by 2032 with an annual expansion rate of 18.27%.

“Our vision is to become a global leader in marine robotics. As the prime minister says, we want to build in India and sell to the world,” said Johns, thrashing out the company’s vision during an interaction with Inc42. 

What supports this vision is an increasing demand for underwater robotics, fuelled by an escalating need for environmental research, as well as applications in the energy and defence sector. The volatile geopolitical environment makes local manufacturing of advanced hardware like robots a strategic priority, reaffirming both EyeROV’s narrative and aspiration. 

Innovation That Solves Marine Reality 

“We started up in 2016 to build underwater vehicles or robots to do quick inspections of structures like ship hulls, dams, bridges, and port structures,” said Johns. “These assets typically are at a depth of 100 m or more. So, it is a very risky and harsh environment for humans to dive that deep.” 

That’s how EyeROV began its journey, triggered largely by an incident that made Kannappa intrigued in subsea robotics during his stint as a marine scientist at the National Institute of Ocean Technology. While he was travelling on a ship, there was the need for an inspection of the hull after a collision. As the inspection called for specialised divers, it took a couple of days before they could arrive and let the ship resume its journey. 

Johns was working at industrial automation startup GreyOrange at that time. The two old friends, who had earlier founded a robotics club together in college, went on to float EyeROV. It took them six-nine months to build the proof of concept prototype, which turned into their first underwater vehicle Tuna, an ROV designed for underwater inspections at up to 100 m depth. Within 18 months, they had developed the first commercial-grade version which was delivered to a laboratory under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). 

EyeROV claims it has so far completed more than 100 inspection projects. “We are operating in India, Middle East, and Europe with a team of over 65 employees and expanding to Southeast Asia. We are scaling aggressively in terms of team size and revenue now,” Johns said. 

He, however, declined to share specific business figures. “We have been growing 2-3-fold almost every year. We were EBITDA positive and PAT positive last year, and look forward to being profitable this year as well,” he said.

While Tuna remains a core product in the company’s portfolio, EyeROV has expanded its offerings with iBoat Alpha, an unmanned surface vehicle, essentially an autonomous boat designed to collect water samples and measure water depth at ports, which is a crucial task to enable vessels to move properly and not get grounded in unexpectedly shallow water. 

EyeROV Eyes Bigger Portfolio 

As EyeROV began skating, it started working with dams and the hydropower sector, maritime and port organisations, and oil and gas companies like ONGC, BPCL, and GAIL, as well as government research organisations. According to Johns, 75% of the company’s customers are government bodies and PSUs. 

This led to one of the company’s major achievements – a collaboration with the Indian Navy through the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) scheme. “We were selected for Defence India Startup Challenge and asked to build an advanced underwater ROV for military and civilian applications,” Johns said. 

The company built Trout – a specialised, advanced version of Tuna that can operate in open waters up to a depth of 300 m. While Tuna is suitable for onshore applications, Trout can be used for inspections of offshore structures, like deep-sea pipelines or oil rigs in open water. After EyeROV conducted a series of trials and demos, the Indian Navy placed a ₹47 Cr order with the startup for the procurement of Trout models. 

EyeROV also has launched a specialised ROV called TS-ROV, built for the inspection of long-range tunnels and pipelines. “TS-ROV is mainly used to inspect very long tunnels and pipelines which carry water between dams or from a dam to a power generation turbine. These tunnels don’t have multiple entry points, so you need to travel long-range in and out,” Johns said. “TS-ROV has a range of 10 km. Tuna and Trout can go 500-800 m while most of the other underwater ROVs in the industry have a maximum range of 1 km.” 

EyeROV believes its TS-ROV has an edge over competitors due to this high range, as well as its ability to carry multiple sensor payloads, which enables advanced inspection capabilities. 

A point of pride for the startup is its highly localised supply chain. It designs its ROVs in-house and claims that 70-80% of the final product is manufactured locally. Only the payloads – the highly specialised on-board sensors – are imported, as there are no India-based vendors for the same. “We have been awarded around five patents and five more are under evaluation,” he added. 

“We also have an advanced software analytics platform. For example, from a dam inspection, typically you will have 200 hours of video and you need someone to look at the entire data and identify issues, which is very difficult. We have built a system using AI that can automatically identify and tag cracks and anomalies in the video footage, and we also do post-processing that enhances images and videos. Essentially, we are generating a digital twin of the structure to spot defects.” 

The Business Model Of ROVs 

EyeROV operates on a dual business model. Clients can hire the startup under the Robotics-as-a-Service model, as part of which EyeROV sends in its crew who operate their products to conduct an inspection of the asset, which could be a dam, port, ship, or any other type of infrastructure. Based on the resulting analysis, the client receives an inspection report identifying any issues and recommending the appropriate measures such as repairing cracks or failures. 

EyeROV also offers a direct sale option where customers can buy the equipment and are trained to use it. “We sell the equipment mostly to defence organisations and disaster response forces like the NDRF or police, where they don’t have time to call us for our services when incidents like drowning occur,” Johns said. 

The direct sale model is also used by research organisations like the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research. “NCPOR does research in remote locations like Antarctica and they cannot take our crew as transportation comes at a high cost so they prefer to operate the product themselves. Plus, the data is confidential.” 

While working mainly with government organisations is a point of prestige, it also raises challenges from the perspective of meeting investor expectations. 

“Investors used to shy away from defence due to long lead cycles. It is getting better with recent changes to the procurement policy but it still needs to be improved. The acceptance of new technologies and our clients’ risk appetite in the procurement process has to increase. It takes 10-12 years to scale a deeptech company, but if VCs are coming in, their timeline is 5-6 years for generating returns. To meet that, our end-clients have to speed up in terms of technology acceptance,” said Johns. 

The founders started out focussed on building an innovative product. But as the company matured, they realised one of them had to take over the business side. Johns stepped into the shoes of the CEO, while Kannappa took the lead on product development as the CTO. 

India’s 7,517 km coastline runs through nine states and touches 1,382 islands. The government’s vision of New India by 2030 highlights the Blue Economy as one of the 10 core dimensions of growth. The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) devised the Deep Ocean Mission with an allocation of ₹4,077 Cr for five years to 2028. The aim is to help India achieve its target of building a ₹10,000 Cr blue economy. 

Backed by an increasing push for a Digital India, the Deep Ocean Mission has unleashed a great opportunity for deeptech startups like EyeROV. The founders believe their products have the edge to drive business, while government policies pave the way for more deeptech players to ride the raging waves into India’s booming blue economy. 

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