Sankalp Arora, along with his co-founders from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, started Gather AI, a startup that utilizes software and consumer drones to enable advanced inventory management in warehouses, in 2017. As the lead mind behind Gather AI’s software, Arora’s first role there was chief robotics officer, but he now leads the company as CEO. The company raised $10 million in Series A funding in 2022, and, in 2023, it made its first acquisition, increasing its customer count to 25 firms.
How does your product fill a specific niche or solve a problem?
We provide real-time inventory visibility in warehouses using a fleet of autonomous drones. Lack of inventory visibility causes roughly $2 million of net revenue loss to our customers across the supply chain. Our customers (warehouse operators) need solutions that help identify misplaced inventory, meet more orders, increase facility utilization and reduce line-downs in an industry plagued with a labor shortage and high churn rates. By digitizing their inventory and operations in real-time, we provide our customers with the visibility to solve the problems defined above and yield a net increase in revenue, labor savings and operational efficiency. Given the supply-chain volatility, 144,000 warehouses in the U.S. alone fit the description of operations we can make a positive impact on.
What is your vision for the future impact of your product?
We enable warehouses to capture what is physically sitting in their racks, digitize it and report insights on operations, all at a press of a button. Starting with drones, then cameras on forklifts and hand-held devices, our customers will be able to understand the ground reality of their operations from their desks, enabling the supply chain to work in a proactive fashion in a dynamic world.
Join us at The Assembly in Bloomfield on Sept. 20 to honor our Fire Awards recipients and celebrate innovation, resilience and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
