Executive Summary
An anthropomorphic robot powered by artificial intellect is offered for business applications by Invento Robotics. Their main product, called Mitra, offers capabilities including voice scanning, engaging gestures, and realistic dialogue. Mitra can detect visitors using facial acknowledgment technology, involve them in conversation, and notify the hosts of their presence. This case study examination will discuss several business-related topics and offer suggestions for the company. First, a five C’s study will be performed, looking at the firm, collaborators, consumers, rivals, and circumstances. Investors should proceed with deploying their robots or not based on a decision regarding all of these external circumstances. It will then briefly analyze Invento’s brand and determine whether it is distinctive.
This will raise the question of whether Invento can levy an extra for its brand name. The investigation will then examine robot price and determine if R&D or rival economics has enough sway to tip the scales in Invento Technologies’ favor, given that it is a young company competing against numerous well-established rivals. Last but not least, the report will discuss Invento Robotics’ product offerings and distribution initiatives and argue whether the robotics business should collaborate with an outside sales firm rather than concentrate its customer’s requests on the domestic sales force.
The five-Cs
Decision-making in sales promotion may have a significant impact on a company, thus, it is important to carefully and thoughtfully weigh all options. The 5 C’s of brand management has grown in popularity since it thoroughly evaluates all the important aspects of a company and allows for approach adjustments depending on what is and is not effective. The five Cs are context, company, collaborators, customers, and competitors.
Company Overview
Balaji Viswanathan founded Invento in Bangalore in 2016, intending to make robots, specifically intelligent robots, in Indian households. Male and female humanoid robots from the Mitra and Mitri market segments were created and produced by Invento. The goal of Invento was to commercialize significant lab discoveries by fusing corporate acumen with academic research. Its competitive edge came from unique features, including location-based consciousness, gesture-based comprehensive voice dialogues, and the capacity to recognize emotions, entities, and faces. It also specializes in corporate applications.
Mitri and Mitra Company’s goal is to convince business clients that using a robot arm for consumer interactions will save those cash in the long run by reducing the need for human staff. The “masculine” humanoid robot, called the Invento Mitra, stands 5 feet tall and has a variety of functions, including Bluetooth, positioning and independent mapping, language understanding, and more. Mitri, their female software, on the other hand, is a bit tiny and has more consumer characteristics that businesses can use and are referred to as “soft talents” like interpersonal skills and attitude tracking. Per the case analysis, the CEO Bala Viswanathan, the CRO Satish Roy, four sales department employees, and several engineers make up the tiny workforce at Invento Robotic Systems.
Collaborators
To export many of the conventional parts needed for robot manufacturing, Invento has established a vendor distribution network. Twenty international trade fairs, such as CES and the global AI exhibitions that Invento Robotics attended, resulted in partnerships and several customer prospects. CES is a yearly trade exhibition where more than 2000 US consumer technology businesses exhibit. Global AI specialists, data scientists, entrepreneurs, think tanks, decision-makers, and investors are at the World AI exhibition (Finkel and Krämer 112). The CEO also maintains a personal web profile on Linkedin and Quora, which he utilizes to identify potential clients and partners in the industry. Unfortunately, Invento Automation appears to have no reliable partners for sales channels. The robotics company has trouble locating a reliable distribution partner in global markets. This will be covered in more detail later in the analysis. Invento also considers it challenging to swap suppliers in this sector since it produces such expensive goods with intricate elements.
Customers
Fortune 1000 firms that needed humanoid robots were the focus of Invento. Retail, banking, medicine, administration, leisure, and schooling are six key areas where bipedal robot technologies such as Invento are situated for success. Invento divides its clients into two categories: the sane and the vain. High-end individuals who wanted to acquire a robot primarily to flaunt it were vanity clients. To improve consumer service and provide quality to their clientele, Sanity clients required the robot. Larger margins from vanity customers were associated with lower sales volumes, whereas lower profits from sanity customers were associated with higher overall sales. The two major industries served by Invento as clients are IT and business, finance, and industry (BFI). Their portfolio includes well-known companies, including Barclay, Federal Bank, Deloitte, and Infosys Corporation. Addressing the hotel, retail, and automobile sectors, where their closest rival, Softbank Robots, has a solid grasp on the market share, is an area where Invento falls short. Regarding addressing industry standards, Invento divided its clientele into two categories: vanity, which served high-end clients, and sanity section, which had a complex and drawn-out purchasing procedure.
Competitors
The household robotics industry is very competitive; even while established firms’ IP rights prevent new competitors from entering the market, they quickly find themselves and utilize their expertise and unique technologies. Amy robots in China and Japan and Softbank robotics are significant worldwide participants. With headquarters in Tokyo, Shanghai, California, Harvard, Paris, Deutschland, and the UK, these businesses are present worldwide. Softbank’s three critical products are available: a suction sweeper, a teaching helper, and a client service robot. Amy Robotics, in contrast, concentrates solely on humanoid solutions, offering several devices that may be distinguished by size and an API that customers can use to build applications for their machines. Additionally, Invento is up against rivalry from Indian producers like Sirena Technologies.
Commodity WISE, Aldebaran’s “Ginger” robot, which Fujitsu subsequently purchased, is the primary rival to Inventor. The trailing edge is a French robotics business. This robot is arguably the most comparable to Invento’s products. However, Invento’s robotics outperform Pepper on several metrics. Larger companies and a tighter hold on the marketplace share distinguish Invento’s rivals, and Invento will soon have a steep hill to climb to fight with powerful corporations like Softbank Technologies. However, Invento must launch its products and rely on its commercial edge, which, as the CEO indicated, would be corporate apps focusing on precise implementation, safety, confidentiality, and implementation for their clients.
Context
The concept appears promising after context analysis. The future belongs to humanoids. Thus, ranking among the top businesses operating in orbit will be advantageous. In respect of contextually riding the robots wave, redefining customer support, and accelerating businesses into the future, Invento has a strong position. They also have a great idea to concentrate on integrating the anthropomorphic into the unique system of their clientele. This will significantly enhance the worth of their product. However, based on my third co-op involvement in a robotics business, this might be difficult for engineers and it take a long time to advance the pipeline and acquire new products.
Why Inventos Brand is Unique
Although Invento’s merchandise is distinctive, the company’s brand may not be. Apart from Peppers, Mitri and Mitra seem very different from other commodities that the other firms sell (Mitri 156). At least 50 businesses produce robot systems that resemble those made by Invento, while hundreds of companies build intelligent machines at conferences like CES and Intelligence conferences. Invento keeps its word and integrates the robot into its target systems. There should be a brand benefit in such a situation, but costs will also go up. Being a bipedal robot firm does not make it memorable because there are several robot companies like Softbank, Amy Robots, and Mesleh Technologies. The company is one of the few businesses in this field of robotics, so possibly there is some potential for inventiveness in this area. Generally, Invento might do some amazing things with its trademarks because there is not much history of branding in this industry. Invento can potentially present itself as a specialty electronics brand, in which case it will be able to command a premium price.
Price That the Mitra and Mitri Robots Should be Sold
Given Invento’s pledge to customize its robots to each client’s demands, they could charge a little more. Their scientists’ assistance and customization will bring value by cooperating with the customer directly. I suggest setting their prices a little lower than their competitors as a start-up business to get market share. They may raise the pricing and convince designers of the value they provide to warrant increased costs if they have numerous case histories of humanoids succeeding in the industries they want to join. To stay even, they will have to sell two monthly robots at a starting price of thirteen thousand, which is the lesser part of the rival pricing range. If customers want to test both the Mitri and the Mitra robots, they can also offer a set of two machines for twenty thousand.
Channel design that Invento should use to distribute Mitra and Mitri
Inventory Automation should collaborate with foreign wholesalers that take a percentage of the sales to advertise its technology in other countries. Freelance sales agents might act as a buffer against slowing sales in the Indian marketplace by collaborating with the corporate sales team. They may raise the possibility of Invento obtaining a top-notch situational analysis to add to their library and the sale of one or two robots every month in a foreign market. The internal sales staff may use this research report to grow the company domestically.
Since foreign sales networks will not be able to serve customers, this will work despite Invento’s strategic edge of client personalization. Nevertheless, for the time term, since Invento is a young business, this might be wonderful for them to penetrate global regions and develop their footing. They may then cut links with the foreign sales channel and recruit internal sales associates who they will educate and deploy to those regions if they observe performance and a recurring sequence of business inside those regions.
Work Cited
Finkel, Marcel, and Nicole C. Krämer. “Humanoid Robots – artificial. Human-like. Credible? Empirical comparisons of source credibility attributions between humans, humanoid robots, and non-human-like devices.” International Journal of Social Robotics (2022): 109-117.
Mitri, Hani, Rudrajit Mitra, and Ting Ren. “Research advances into mine safety science and engineering.” Journal of Sustainable Mining 21.2 (2022): 155-156.