Californian start-up Vimaan, a computer vision company for warehouse inventory management, has emerged from stealth to announce $25m in seed and series A financing.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Vimaan automates and digitises inventory capture, tracking and management across the warehouse, including receiving, put-away and picking, storage, and pack and ship.

“The process of collecting inventory data is a major bottleneck within warehouse management,” said KG Ganapathi, founder and CEO of Vimaan. “While there have been some technological advancements in robotics and warehouse automation over the past decade, the Vimaan platform is the first of its kind to offer wall to wall coverage of warehouse inventory. Warehouse managers constantly face competing objectives of keeping inventory tracking labour costs low while simultaneously keeping inventory accuracy high. Vimaan has worked hand in hand with our blue-chip customers to strike at the heart of data tracking challenges in the warehouse. The Vimaan platform enables a warehouse manager to realise 100% inventory accuracy and visibility with minimal labour oversight. This in turn results not only in labour savings, but also in reduced inventory wastage, fewer claims and chargebacks, reduced reverse logistics costs, and overall improvement in quality.”

The Vimaan platform comprises computer vision-based technologies including cameras, a sensor suite and computer vision algorithms to see, interpret and digitally reconstruct inventory according to the warehouse’s requirements. It is simultaneously capable of barcode and RFID reading. The data are presented in an intuitive software application that directly interfaces with a WMS and provides actionable insights. The entire offering is designed to fit into existing workflows, with little to no infrastructure changes or training required for the warehouse workforce.

For the past two years, Vimaan has been working with 3PLs and brand owners to perfect its inventory tracking. These users, who are in full production with Vimaan, have realised benefits in productivity and cost savings. Vimaan is now ready to share these with the rest of the industry. It plans to launch a series of products this year designed to support inventory tracking and inventory control in multiple areas of the warehouse. Over the coming weeks, Vimaan plans to announce details of its products, customer engagements and case studies of its deployments.

The investment came from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Wing VC and Neotribe Ventures.

“Inefficiencies within the warehouse and logistics industries have spotlighted huge opportunities for technological advancement and investment,” said Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner at NEA. “We’ve been enthusiastically tracking the warehouse robotics and automation industry for a while and are thrilled to expand our portfolio in the space by partnering with Vimaan to apply revolutionary computer vision technology to transform inventory processes and empower warehouse managers across the industry.”