Ankit is the Co-Founder and CEO at Cautio. Cautio is building AI-powered dashcams and video telematics solutions to improve road safety across India, helping fleets, drivers, and passengers with real-time monitoring, behavioral insights, and reliable video evidence for incidents and insurance.
In this episode, we delve into how AI dashcams can address India’s road safety crisis.
- Dashcams act as the “helmet for cars,” filling a critical safety gap
- Detect driver behavior like fatigue, phone usage, seat belt violations, and harsh driving in real time
- Video telematics provides more accurate insights and evidence than GPS-only tracking
- Reduces false allegations and speeds up insurance claims and law enforcement processes
Ankit also shares his journey of building Cautio and tackling one of India’s biggest infrastructure challenges. We discuss the future of video telematics, the role of AI in driver safety, and what it takes to scale a hardware + software startup in India.
Listen On
Episode Timestamps
- 00:00:53:06 – Intro
- 00:02:58:07 – The need for Cautio
- 00:04:52:14 – India’s Road Safety
- 00:09:52:06 – Early Customer Stories
- 00:12:16:00 – Top Metrics
- 00:14:16:21 – 10 Year Vision
- 00:14:49:24 – Building first or Selling First
- 00:18:21:15 – B2B or B2C
- 00:25:02:03 – Should you buy a Dashcam?
- 00:27:52:02 – Dashcams and Insurance
- 00:29:45:06 – Selling to India Businesses
- 00:32:43:17 – Solving for Indian Context
- 00:38:16:02 – How many are in the Cautio team?
- 00:40:59:21 – How did Ankit start?
- 00:59:15:19 – Hardware
- 01:04:03:11 – Research and Development
- 01:08:02:11 – Culture
- 01:10:30:16 – Scaling Manufacturing
- 01:13:45:16 – Mindset while approaching the driver
- 01:15:46:18 – Friends and Family Reactions
- 01:19:05:22 – Myths of Drivers
- 01:23:42:08 – What’s next?
About Ankit Acharya
Ankit Acharya is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cautio, an AI-driven platform focused on enhancing road safety through smart dashcams and video telematics. He is working on enabling safer mobility, faster insurance workflows, and data-driven fleet management across India.
Full Transcript
Ankit Acharya:
India ranks one today. Close to 500,000 road incidents and accidents have happened, resulting in about 200,000 deaths. This is very concerning, and these numbers are growing at 14 percent year-on-year. About 3,000 women filed a petition in the US urging Uber to put dashcams. We have done extensive surveys, and one of them told us that about 50 percent of women prefer taking an auto because it is easier to jump off. Roughly 50 to 60 percent of all allegations against drivers are false positives. The driver is always sitting on the right side. He drives for about 10 to 12 hours, gets sweaty, and may itch. From behind, it can look like he is doing something inappropriate.
Aditya Anand:
Thanks so much for doing this, Ankit. It is great to have you here, and I am excited to learn more about you and Cautio’s journey. Likewise, thank you.
Ankit Acharya:
Likewise. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Aditya Anand:
Can you start by telling us what was the moment that led you to start Cautio? When did it all come together?
Ankit Acharya:
It had a lot to do with how we had been thinking about this space for a long time. Dashcams are a super interesting and exciting category. I have traveled and seen dashcam penetration happen at scale in different countries like Hong Kong, China, and Dubai. We also read a TechCrunch article that around 3,000 women filed a petition in the US urging Uber to put dashcams inside vehicles to promote safety.
I was working at Namma Yatri last year. Along with operations, we were looking at safety ops. Every day we saw incidents and accidents that were not publicly visible, but there was a lot of hearsay. Friction between driver and passenger, and accidents. People called it the new normal. It was surprising that no one was solving it. GPS told you where the vehicle was. No one told you what was happening inside.
While researching the space to solve it deeply, a friend of mine went through an issue with one of the cab companies. I cannot name them. It turned extremely ugly. She was impacted mentally, but no one could do anything because there was no evidence. That was the trigger for me. Something needed to be built, and that is how Cautio was born.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s talk more about safety. When I think about safety while taking rides, there is the aspect of traffic accidents and the aspect of driver behavior. I know many people who hesitate to use cabs or certain services because they worry about safety. Where does Cautio fit into this story?
Ankit Acharya:
You referred to the numbers, and we have seen similar signals. We have done extensive surveys, and one told us that roughly 50 to 55 percent of women prefer taking an auto because it is easier to jump off. That is not the kind of mobility anyone wants to build.
Cautio wants to solve this. Our purpose is to make Indian roads safer, starting from inside the vehicle. We work with fleet operators across the country who understand the importance of dropping passengers safely and ensuring the driver behaves well. We play a small role as the anchor for something they wanted for a long time but was not available or not being advocated.
I talk a lot about dashcams. I do not say go buy a Cautio dashcam. I say go get a dashcam. It is your safety. It is your insurance. We are starting by educating people that roads are unsafe. You need to see it and understand what others are going through. A simple device, which hardly costs anything, can go a long way in protecting you and others on the road. That is where we fit in.
Aditya Anand:
Looking at road safety overall, India has among the worst statistics for road traffic death rates. What can be done?
Ankit Acharya:
Just yesterday, we were going through data from MoRTH and global reports. India ranks one today. Close to 500,000 road incidents and accidents happened, resulting in about 200,000 deaths. This is very concerning, and these numbers are growing at 14 percent year-on-year. These are annual numbers. We are not disciplined. We get impatient when we drive. Some of it is due to infrastructure. Roads are not always designed for proper commute.
Yet, if I go to another country and drive, I will stick to the speed limit, ensure I have my license, and follow local rules. It is more to do with our mindset than a new normal.
No one has tried solving this deeply. Some companies have sold dashcams, but they did not tell people why a dashcam matters. Look at helmets. It took years to become mandatory. It was a luxury product when it started. Today it is a necessity because accidents taught us the importance. Similarly, dashcams are the helmet for cars. They are an additional safety when things go wrong. We are still in the learning phase.
We have gotten customers over the last few months who understand the value. Some want to protect their fleets because fleets are expensive, or to ensure drivers are well maintained and trained. We are moving from just reaching from point A to point B to caring about experience and safety. Companies like Schofffer are focusing on being the gold standard, ensuring safe, affordable rides with top-notch experience. We will be part of that experience as a silent catalyst in one corner of the car.
There are two ways to think of dashcams. First, normal dashcams you get on Amazon or Flipkart. These are digital camcorders for your car. They record mostly outside and store footage on the device, like a black box restricted to that car. Second, smart or AI-powered dashcams, which Cautio offers. These are smart devices that do not need human intervention. The device looks at the driver at all times and monitors driving patterns.
One of the biggest use cases is fatigue. Most road accidents happen due to fatigue, especially on long commercial journeys. The camera can detect drowsiness. Other use cases exist in three-wheelers, four-wheelers, or education campuses. Inside the cabin, we focus on driver behavior: smoking, talking on the phone, wearing a seat belt, speaking loudly. Outside, it monitors driving patterns: following distance, overspeeding, signal violations. This data is real time and can be streamed by a fleet operator anywhere. They can see where the vehicle and driver are and whether the passenger is comfortable. They use that data to train or penalize the driver depending on the case. Dashcams are moving from dumb camcorders to smart, self-reliant devices. That is what we are building.
Aditya Anand:
Any customer stories from Cautio you want to share?
Ankit Acharya:
Many. One of our first customers is a company called Aussie Gaps. They gave us a purchase order for 100 vehicles when we only had a prototype. We met the founders, Bharat and Rajat, through a referral. After one conversation they said, I love what you are doing, here is a purchase order for 100 vehicles. That triggered me to quit my job. If one meeting can get 100 vehicles and deliver value, there is a large market.
We were not funded and were bootstrapped. Hardware is expensive: operating systems, procurement, licensing, testing. We were tight on cash, so we could only produce 10 devices, the lowest MOQ our manufacturer supported. We gave them to Bharat. After three months, he told us the 10 vehicles with cameras reported the lowest incidents compared to the other 90, primarily because drivers started behaving and driving well. He asked for the rest of the cameras. That validated our problem statement.
So far, we have moved close to 450,000 people safely, about 450,000 trips with our cameras in the car. We have clocked about 5 million kilometers in the last three months. We call them safe kilometers. That is our biggest validation. We are also seeing a positive trend where drivers increasingly behave well. They understand that the device is for their safety and there is evidence if they do not behave or drive well.
Aditya Anand:
You spoke about safe kilometers. Apart from this, how do you think about metrics? What are the top metrics you track at Cautio?
Ankit Acharya:
First, how many passengers are safe because of us. That is the biggest metric. We started the company to help India move safely, and that starts with people being safe. Daily, we track the number of trips across clients and the number of alerts generated. We have AI-generated alerts, and our internal goal is for these alerts to go to zero over the next couple of years. We are seeing a steady dip of about 2 to 3 percent month-on-month. That means the camera is capturing fewer offenses. The driver is behaving well, wearing a seat belt, not talking on the phone, and not driving unsafely. We are going all out on that.
We also track routing, time in traffic, and intracity GPS data. We keep it simple: are we catering to more women customers? We have a customer where we are 100 percent deployed, and they see an upsurge in women travelers because they can take a cab at 10 PM or 2 AM knowing someone is watching over them like a guardian angel. These are the metrics we track at a fundamental level, and we are going deeper into critical business aspects as well.
Aditya Anand:
What is the ten-year vision of Cautio?
Ankit Acharya:
We want Indian roads to be the safest roads in the world, period. I am not going to say IPO and all that, though we do want to be the Samsara for the rest of the world. Heart to heart, we want Indian roads to be the most disciplined in the world. The tag of being the most unsafe needs to go away, and that will happen if someone like us steps up and takes real responsibility.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go back to the early days. Did you start building first or selling first?
Ankit Acharya:
A mix of both. I was not actively selling, but I was gauging interest and teasing the market. We are a product that fits both B2B and B2C, and it was a fight between head and heart. Both markets are massive. Today, given we are focused on B2B, we see greater potential there than D2C, but both are attractive.
We wanted to understand customers and personas, so we spoke to about 200 to 220 auto drivers, cab drivers, fleet operators, and consumers. We wanted to know what was missing, what they wanted, and if they would accept it. We got strong feedback. About 95 to 96 percent said they want dashcams and are okay to pay upfront. Some said they are okay to pay on a subscription basis, but it should cost one chai and one sutta, roughly 28 to 30 rupees.
They also told us why GPS is inefficient. That was the selling part where I was selling the concept and story. In parallel we were building. We knew that to make this a mass product, even acceptable to an auto driver and a fleet aggregator, we had to work deeply on price. From surveys, we identified the sweet spot for the customer. We locked the price point, understood subscription, and planned monetization over X months. That gave us a target device cost and we worked backwards to build the hardware and business.
Our first prototype cost about INR 24,000 to 25,000. The second came down to about INR 11,000 to 12,000. By the fourth or fifth prototype, we touched about INR 9,000 manufacturing cost in India. Then we decided to do it at scale. We achieved a number much better than anticipated. That was possible because we were talking to customers in parallel, taking real-time feedback, and co-building the product with them. We believe hardware or OS work makes sense only if you co-build with the users. We do that daily.
Aditya Anand:
I want to double click on B2B versus B2C. Businesses have a different perspective. How should a business decide it is time to work with someone like Cautio? What is the proposition for a fleet owner?
Ankit Acharya:
For a fleet owner, two main things: safety and efficiency. Safety could be for the fleet itself, which is an expensive asset, for the driver, who may be a contract worker, or for the passenger. Fleet owners want vehicles running at full capacity in the safest manner. Drivers should behave well. If an incident happens, when it is a third-party issue, the car and driver should see the lowest possible downtime. If it is a driver-instigated issue, that is different. They want to eliminate hearsay between driver and passenger.
Operators who work with us and go through accidents say our cameras, acting as evidence, reduce TAT for incidents. Insurance claims come faster because there is evidence. Law enforcement and lawyers spend less time with you. Evidence makes it clear. That is why safety works well.
The second anchor is platform exclusivity. Some operators with 100 cars are exclusive with Uber, Ola, Rapido, or Namma Yatri, but drivers do offline trips too. That is dead kilometers for the fleet owner who pays for energy, car, and driver. GPS data alone does not help because the driver can say anything. With a dashcam or video telematics, when there is no booking and the driver is going off path, not returning to the hub, or not accepting trips, you can see exactly why.
For all this, they pay a small subscription fee. When they earn, they pay us. If an incident is mitigated, they often recover a month’s fees across vehicles. Paying 700 to 900 rupees per vehicle per month is a no-brainer. From a pricing perspective, we work well. From an experience perspective, customers love us. Ask any of them and they will say they love Cautio because the customer experience is good. We tell our team we are okay to lose business or not grow, but customers must be happy. If there is an accident or incident, we should be the first to stand up for them. We are their line of defense. We used to say we want American Express level service. Now, inspired by Ganesh from Frito, we want to be the Frito of this space.
Given we are full stack and tech-first, we operate the hardware, have rights to it, and understand what goes inside. The operating system is built in-house. This gives us flexibility for changes, tweaks, and new feature launches. Some customers wanted an API-first approach. We were the only ones who could give it to them so they have one unified operations dashboard with Cautio coexisting.
Unusually for a SaaS company in this space, we went multilingual from day zero. We support seven languages on the OS because ops people prefer their language of choice, and we are doing the same for hardware now. We listen daily and then deploy. Education is key. We learn first, then share, and we are seeing acceptance. We are taking it slowly, thinking from first principles, not following playbooks. We look up to companies like Samsara. They made US roads safer with strong penetration in commercial vehicles. Their drivers are well behaved due to one device. We are building for Indian consumers while learning from the best.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go to the B2C use case. If I have a private vehicle, should I buy a dashcam, and how should I think about the investment versus what I get out of it?
Ankit Acharya:
You should definitely get a dashcam. It does not matter which brand. We are early in this journey. Your first phone was not an iPhone. Start with any decent product and build the habit. A dashcam can cost anywhere between 3,000 rupees up to 25,000 rupees depending on brand, model, camera quality, and lens. Start with a 3,000 to 5,000 rupee dashcam. It will do the job, record content, and help when incidents happen.
On Bengaluru roads, incidents and accidents are common. You never know when it can happen. It is like health insurance. You keep paying the premium; one day it helps you. Motor insurance is similar. Insurance companies are becoming stringent. Premiums are growing significantly, around 15 percent year-on-year. Inspectors come, assess, and there is scrutiny. If you want to speed up the process, remove your SD card and give them the footage. For 3,000 to 5,000 rupees for a device that lasts about four years, you are paying roughly 1,000 rupees a year with minimal additional cost.
Aditya Anand:
This seems structural. It should impact insurance premiums as well. If I am a well-behaved driver, I should pay less.
Ankit Acharya:
Absolutely. That already exists in the West. There are driver-score-based and bite-size insurance products depending primarily on driver behavior and driving patterns. It is coming to India. IRDAI has recognized it. It was missing because earlier attempts tried to build on top of telematics or GPS. It does not work with GPS alone. It works with video telematics because you need to see the driver and how he is driving. A car may tell you there was sharp braking, but you do not know why. Maybe it was a third-party issue. Without visual evidence, you cannot build a solid product.
We are focusing deeply on insurance. We are building something from first principles. Customers will want premium discounts as an incentive for installing a dashcam. They should also have an insurance partner who understands dashcam-backed insurance. Both are important. We are in the education phase, working with a partner, and hope to go live soon.
Aditya Anand:
I hear you are very pro-India and hopeful about improving conditions here. Many founders are bearish on selling to Indian businesses. What has been your experience selling in India, and how do Indian businesses approach this?
Ankit Acharya:
India is a large market. If you understand customers and consumers, you can sell here. We are price-sensitive, but if you show value, you will have customers. I understand mobility well. I was part of the early team at Bounce and Bounce Infinity, then Namma Yatri. I have sold scooters, offered subscriptions, and enabled people to move.
We tested pricing across the board. India is so large one player cannot do it all. Many VCs asked us to look outside India. We will, when the time is right. There is demand from other parts of the world, but India’s commercial market is the heart of the country. About 8 crore commercial vehicles exist here. If you help them move efficiently, you reduce road safety incidents and directly contribute to the country’s growth. Improving efficiency means more trips, fewer accidents, and more commerce.
We want to solve for India first. Even if we do not go outside India, we can build a very large company from here. It is also personal. My friends have gone through issues. I do not want anyone else to. I spoke to six or seven close female friends. Every one had experienced something that made them uncomfortable. That is not the India I want. I believe Cautio can play a small role in fixing that, starting at home.
Aditya Anand:
Selling in India needs context. Solutions must work in the Indian ecosystem and society. Is any part of the Cautio product especially contextualized to India?
Ankit Acharya:
Everything is localized to India. For example, earlier devices struggled to differentiate between a human and a two-wheeler because in the West pedestrians do not usually cross in the same way, and two-wheelers and four-wheelers are often separated. We localized to ensure the camera understands Indian conditions where pedestrians crossing and mixed traffic are normal.
We decided to support multiple languages so ops teams can use their preferred language. On hardware, fleets do not want 4K cameras. They want cameras that clearly capture number plates and recordings. We built hardware after sitting with them.
Most telematics hardware in India runs on 2G SIMs. We asked why, when the country has 5G. We were the first to offer 5G in our device. That improved real-time data. Initially, there was latency of about 45 to 60 seconds from recording to operator view. Today it is about 10 to 11 seconds, which is close to real time. We also handle network fluctuations by locally storing content, queuing it, and uploading later.
We thought from first principles about what a customer or fleet owner wants without compromising quality or customer service, while minimizing friction at the right price point. We have never lost a customer due to pricing or had one negotiate hard when we quote 700 or 800 rupees monthly. People expect a powerful product to cost 8,000 to 10,000 upfront, but we offer monthly subscriptions and figure out scale.
We have strong organic demand because we understand what customers want. If a client anchors on safety, we talk safety. If they focus on revenue leakage or strategic partnerships, we talk that language. This cannot be a cold sell. The fleet market is only now becoming organized. It has been unorganized and cash-rich. We help both kinds of operators by talking like friends, understanding their issues, and then offering solutions.
We also offer a 30-day trial, inspired by a mattress return policy I liked. We take a small security deposit and rental. Test in as many vehicles as you want. If you do not like it in 30 days, no questions asked, we take the devices back. That worked well. Customers often started with 10 to 30 vehicles and then gave us their entire fleet because they trusted us. We go in to educate, not just sell. We are heavy on community and want to push that narrative forward.
Aditya Anand:
How big is Cautio?
Ankit Acharya:
We are now 22 people.
Aditya Anand:
It sounds like the team is very on the ground and customer-focused. It could also be ops-heavy since you have to do installations and such.
Ankit Acharya:
Actually, not too heavy. Overall, Pranjal’s team is about 60 percent of our manpower, including the R&D team led by Rajiv. On the business side, we have three ops people in Bengaluru and one in Mumbai. Each city will likely need no more than three to four people. We divide each city into clusters. We know the 10 cities to go after. Those city teams help customers with last-mile installations.
Devices like these do their job and last when there is minimal physical interference. Dashcams are like CCTV. They sit there for years. When you want footage, you check your phone. Operationally, we handle installations. Some customers do it themselves after we tell them what to do. Some we do through partner networks. For a few premium customers and premium cars, either I, Pranjal, or Rajiv does the installation. We have spent time understanding installations. Every car is slightly different. For electric cars, you might expect wiring on the right, but find it under the gear in some models. Rajiv has done installations from autos to trailers and even buggies. He can guide precisely over a call. First sets are always done by us to study and understand new models, then we hand it over to their team.
Aditya Anand:
Pranjal is your cofounder. How did you meet, and how did you decide to start this?
Ankit Acharya:
I have known Pranjal since 2011. We went to school together about 13 to 14 years ago. He was one of the toppers; I was a last-bencher. I stayed for two years, then we went our separate paths. I took a drop year after flunking a math paper. Pranjal did engineering. I joined NIFT in Bengaluru. He was in Gurugram working with Urban Company. We were in passive touch on LinkedIn, then started speaking more. He moved to Bengaluru about two years ago. We met at a Starbucks in HSR, talked, and he shared his journey from Urban Company to Dream11 to Card91. He was very frustrated with the city’s roads. I was at Namma Yatri, seeing what was happening from all perspectives. We realized it is a large problem, and we have become too comfortable not solving it, thinking it is the new normal.
Our generation is fortunate to have access to capital and travel. We benchmark ourselves against other countries. I had just done a trip to Hong Kong; he had returned from Dubai. Roads there are better and disciplined.
This is the second company we are building together. The first, last year, was Poetic Press, a PR automation platform to replace agencies with a tech-first approach. Journalists loved it; startups did not. It did not work. We returned the capital and took time off. Dashcams had been on my mind for three years. I told Vivek, the founder of Bounce, that I had a hunch dashcams could become mandatory in India in five years. I have three more years to prove it.
We saw tailwinds, similar to how helmets, FASTag, and HSRP plates became mandatory. At Namma Yatri, looking at safety and security, we saw P0 and P1 issues escalating with increasing trips. It was a eureka moment. Dashcams fit commercial vehicles well. If cabs and autos have dashcams, it would be a game changer. People could call us the safest and most responsible country by doing just this.
We decided to solve for Namma Yatri and auto drivers first. Auto drivers do not have a great reputation in Bengaluru. We built and tested prototypes continuously. In October, one of the Namma Yatri founders, Shaun, told me to leave and build this. For a minute I thought I was getting fired, but he meant go build Cautio. We decided to do it. I quit first in October, and Pranjal joined in January. He was the angel investor for two to three months. That period was tough because we were trying to raise money, run prototypes, and handle organic demand we could not fully cater to. We realized this could be large and jumped in. It has been one to one-and-a-half years now, and it has been great.
Aditya Anand:
How is the prototype engine?
Ankit Acharya:
Lots of debates and disagreements on pricing and features. Rajiv, our partner who leads R&D, is the voice of reason. When he speaks, we listen. He has been right often.
We started our first iteration last July. It was a big box, essentially a power bank with lenses on top. We were trying to connect the camera to the cloud. In India, connected dashcams did not exist. We were the first thinking that way. At the time, we did not know what Samsara, Nexar, or Netradyne were doing. We had zero idea about competition. If I had known any competitor, I might have ended up working with them since my background is mobility. No one had pitched video to me in seven years. That told me either there was no large product in the market or no one had looked at it. That was motivation enough. We did research later.
If you believe a product can be used and has customers, just build it. That is what we did. We churned prototypes fast. One room in Pranjal’s home in Electronic City was a lab. He had a 3D printer, which made it easier to churn quick prototypes. By the fifth prototype, we were convinced. We put one in my car and one in Pranjal’s, ran them for a few thousand kilometers, and they worked perfectly. It was the first made-in-India camera for us. Then we put two devices in Namma Yatri vehicles. By October, we knew it made sense. In November, we visited Hong Kong to learn from global players and manufacturing. In December, we locked manufacturing and were good to go.
We moved very fast over the last year. Sometimes I feel we are slow, but we have done a lot: built hardware and an operating system, got 14 paying customers, have two enterprise deals in the works, set up a great office, built a 22-person team, and got support from investors like Antler, Eti, and AU Bank. There are strong tailwinds indicating India needs dashcams, and Cautio might be the right approach.
Aditya Anand:
How was your experience with fundraising?
Ankit Acharya:
It is frustrating. From the outside, it feels easy, but it tests your patience. Nitin, a partner at Antler, told me this is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need one believer in each round, not many. If many say yes, it might be a red flag.
Antler was our first believer. Last December, I was moving from operator to founder. That is the most difficult zone. You have a comfortable salary and ESOPs, then realize next month there is no salary, and your FNF goes toward your company. October to December was the toughest period. I had tried to raise earlier, but the market changed and investor mindset shifted. It did not stop us, but delayed us. My fear was being too late and losing first customers.
On December 25 or 26, I was venting to my friend Suhas More. He told me to chill and that it would work out. The next day I got a call from Antler. Turns out Arman had referred us. I spoke to their team, then to Rajiv, a partner. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, he said it was great talking. A day or two later, Antler confirmed. They had just launched Teams under their residency, an accelerated way to get to IC. We could not commit to staying three to four months, but they were flexible. We started with them in January, and life changed after that. Antler gave us a pre-term sheet quickly. They were convinced the problem was big enough.
By then, we were also selected for Origami by Eti. We were among the first startups funded in that program. I met Vishy, a partner there, who believes in the India story and was a frustrated dashcam user. He had changed three to four dashcams and thought all were bad. Our pitch meeting was chaotic due to closed cafes and heat, and we ended up pitching in a basement with a laptop. We showed him our camera and why his was frustrating. He understood what we were chasing. Later, I met Vikram, another partner, who believes this can become a large business due to insurance, lending, optimization, and autonomous vehicles. We think of ourselves as an infrastructure layer. We are a deep tech AI company building video as an infrastructure layer, similar to UPI. They understood this even before I articulated it well.
The pre-seed round was fairly easy. AU Bank also came on board and gave us unsecured debt when we had zero revenue and only a few customers. I spoke with Ranjan, who heads new emerging businesses at AU Bank. After one conversation, he said he loved what we were doing and extended that first debt. We have built great relationships with angels and founders. We are currently doing another round and hope to announce something soon.
Aditya Anand:
All the best for that.
Ankit Acharya:
Thank you.
Aditya Anand:
In India, both founders and investors often shy away from hardware. What has to change in founder mindset to tackle hardware, and how should investors evaluate a hardware company?
Ankit Acharya:
Hardware investments in India have been low. People find SaaS or B2B automation sexier and easier to understand. In my case, many things must come together: hardware, operating system, AI, full-stack solutions, customized pricing, and security operations. Hardware is the anchor. Without it, we would be a GPS business, which is not exciting anymore. Some categories need hardware infusion. POS machines and phones are examples.
If I have to solve problems in India, I must think from first principles. The dashcam has to sit in the car. Many VCs understand our value and what we are going after, but their risk appetite has come down. We have reduced risk across facets. We imagine India five to ten years from now. We want video as an infrastructure layer. That means get hardware out, collect and analyze data, help people feel safer daily, and build products on top of it.
If India were not hardware-first, Jio would not exist. The next decade will be a hardware decade. Software will cap out in some areas. In road safety, software must sit on top of something. You cannot put it on a driver’s or passenger’s phone and expect consistent results in commercial vehicles. Retrofitting a standard inbuilt camera across all commercial vehicles is unlikely. You still need to make vehicles safe, and you do it through cameras, which are hardware. If we do not build a brand, people will buy unregulated devices from elsewhere that may not be accepted as evidence in court. We need more believers like Antler and Eti who understand that in five to ten years the story will evolve and they will have played a role in making India safer.
Aditya Anand:
One thing that stands out is the organic pull from inception. Many founders do not have that. What is your advice to a founder trying to get organic pull but not getting it? How do you find and nurture it?
Ankit Acharya:
Listen to your customers. Speak to everyone and step out of your comfort zone. The worst they can say is no. Bounce taught me that. Vivek taught me that when I started as an intern in 2014.
At Bounce Infinity, when we launched the scooter, we catered to Middle India, people who could not afford expensive bikes like Ola or Ather. Bounce bridged aspiration and affordability. We then enabled those who could not afford an auto or cab by equipping them with bikes. We started selling bikes at affordable prices. Then Namma Yatri taught me community. If you treat drivers well and build with them at the center, everyone in the ecosystem is happy. Namma Yatri disrupted pricing across companies by focusing on supply before demand.
At Cautio, we are okay to lose customers or not grow, but not okay to ignore daily feedback. My customers are my friends. Many I met in the last few months, but we have strong relationships. We exchange notes on each other’s industries and figure out how to make mobility safe together. We are also supporting community initiatives like Auto Kannadica’s placards in autos to help translate between English and Kannada. We decided to help place them in 5,000 autos. We want to be part of the ecosystem, encouraging good behavior whether through dashcams or respectful interactions. Every founder should think community first.
Aditya Anand:
How do you set the culture at Cautio for the team? Is there something you explicitly tell them about how to approach things?
Ankit Acharya:
Customer is king. We ask every day whether our customers and consumers are happy. Consumers are drivers and passengers. They are not paying for the service. If there is minimal friction from them, it means they embrace in-vehicle safety. These two are our top priorities.
We also inculcate cross-functional working. Safety is emotional to everyone. Many colleagues and friends have gone through incidents. Only when you talk about them openly do you understand the problem and how your work helps someone move safely. We are a safety and security company not just in product but in mindset.
Our command center ensures all cameras are working with zero downtime, the tech is stable, and the network is up. The team understands that if they do not do their job and something goes wrong, someone could be in trouble. That is the culture we want to preserve.
Aditya Anand:
We spoke about prototyping. Now you are in the middle of scaling. What is the journey of scaling manufacturing?
Ankit Acharya:
The first few months are turbulent. You need certifications, licenses, and deep supply chain understanding. Which port works well, customs, BOE filings, RBI intimation, and more. There is friction for the first two to three consignments. By the fourth or fifth order, you have a mental checklist. Now I do not get involved; Rajiv handles it. We also keep up to date on ports, taxes, and allowed items. We got an expert for taxation.
On manufacturing, we have capacity for about a million cameras a year, though we are not using it fully yet. It is about building relationships with the manufacturer. One of the best things Rajiv did was maintain a great relationship with our partners. You rarely hear of a manufacturer setting up to make 10 or 15 prototype units, but Rajiv got that done for us. Our orders scaled from 10 to 30 to 100 to 300 to 500, and only recently to thousands. The manufacturer has stuck with us and helps daily. There is a lot of learning as we do it together. Even though our manufacturer is overseas, we maintain strong relationships. That community-value angle runs across the company for customers, colleagues, consumers, and partners.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s say you are talking to a common Indian commercial driver. What would you say to them to keep safety top of mind?
Ankit Acharya:
We sell less to drivers now because they already understand. If I show any driver my in-car camera and what it does, the first question is, when can I buy it? They have lived this problem for 10 to 15 years. They have seen Bengaluru roads deteriorate. Ask any auto driver and they will say Friday to Sunday are risky. Drunk passengers create a ruckus, some choose cash, then run without paying. The driver cannot abandon the auto to chase them.
We have had zero cases of drivers saying they do not want it. They all say they want safety. There is a real need. The right product was missing because no one thought from first principles. We identified that gap and are bridging it.
Aditya Anand:
Going back to starting Cautio, what was your friends’ and family’s reaction?
Ankit Acharya:
Friends were surprised because I was in a great place. I was part of the early team at Namma Yatri and happy. It was the most difficult decision to leave and begin this.
My family had questions but was supportive. My dad worked with large companies and startups, then started something of his own, so he has a risk appetite. My mom was supportive. Most people around me knew I would start up eventually. I was delaying it and needed a push. I had the dashcam idea in my head for a long time. One day I woke up and decided to quit and do it. At that moment, you stop caring about the past. You have EMIs, rent, and expenses, but you tell yourself you will figure it out. That convinced my parents too.
I had just joined a company that Google was going to fund. Life would have been comfortable, but I would still be sitting in a corner wondering why no one was solving safety and security. Today, I am fortunate that Namma Yatri is my client. Even though I am not part of that team, it still feels like I am doing something with them. The universe has its ways. So far, no resistance. It looks good.
Aditya Anand:
When I talk about road safety with friends and family in India, there is a sense of apathy, as if this is how things are and will be. Are there any myths or false beliefs that perpetuate this?
Ankit Acharya:
It is easy to blame drivers. We think they are at fault. But data I have seen, including confidential call center reports, shows that about 50 to 60 percent of allegations against drivers are false positives. For example, on weekends, drunk passengers may ask the driver to go extra kilometers, take a U-turn, do a joyride, or even ask the driver to drink. Some drivers may be okay, some not. If a driver is not okay, it does not make him bad. But passengers have the power of social media and may tweet that they were harassed. The driver is first in the line of fire. His auto or car may get impounded. He sits in a police station with no legal representation. Fleet operators rarely represent the driver. There is loss of revenue. It is all linked.
Another example from a ride operator about two years back: in a cab, the driver is on the right side. He drives 10 to 12 hours a day and gets sweaty. He may itch. From behind, it can look like he is doing something inappropriate. During summers, this is worse. He cannot keep the AC on all day. About 20 to 25 percent of certain cases were just this. These are not things the public hears. Newspapers cover sensational headlines, not context.
We want to solve hearsay. Most drivers are good. A small minority creates problems. Influencers like Auto Kannadica also say most auto drivers are not bad and are doing their bit to improve behavior. We need more people to talk about this. I became empathetic toward drivers because I was taught to speak to them first, thanks to community and Namma Yatri.
If you want to build a business in India with end users and consumers, reduce friction between all parties and keep listening. If you keep speaking to them, they will pay you.
Aditya Anand:
What is next for Cautio over the next 6 to 12 months?
Ankit Acharya:
We are just getting started. We want to double down on deployments and get more people on board. I have been doing a lot in Bengaluru to endorse dashcam usage through partnerships. We want to take it pan-India, starting with Delhi NCR.
We are sitting on solid demand. Touch wood, we have paused taking new clients due to organic demand. We are gearing up to deploy about 27,000 devices by September across already-signed customers. We have great partnerships to announce. We will also double down on safety products that reduce friction between driver and passenger, thinking about how to make them friends. We are building community tools around that.
We will go deeper on the operating system. It is the real moat. New levels of analytics will help understand what is happening inside and around the vehicle, ideal speeds, roads to avoid, and more. Hardware has gone through a year of iteration. We will continue with current hardware and focus on firmware improvements.
We will probably not sign new customers for the next few months, with exceptions for critical categories. Educational institutes are a priority because student safety matters. We are with six colleges and one school, and also with ambulances. Trucking we are doing slowly. Resort buggies have lower safety issues, so we do not go deep there. But ambulances and education are categories we will double down on.
Aditya Anand:
Thanks so much for doing this. It was super educational for me.
Ankit Acharya:
Thank you.
Aditya Anand:
As we discussed, India is at rock bottom in terms of road safety, and there is nowhere to go but up. I am glad that you and Cautio are doing something meaningful to improve the situation.
Ankit Acharya:
Thank you so much, Aditya. Perfect.