FoundrPwr - Robots don't Forgive Bad Math
Most startup advice is written for software. Clean iterations, fast deploys, easy rollbacks. Hardware doesn't work like that.
When you're building physical systems; robots, sensors, sortation machines, every assumption you get wrong shows up in the real world, loudly and expensively. The tolerances are tighter, the feedback loops are slower, and the market will punish sloppy thinking without warning.
Pramod Ghadge has lived this. He co-founded Unbox Robotics in 2019 and has since built it into one of the most credible robotics companies to come out of India — with deployments across three continents, a 5x year-on-year revenue trajectory, and a ₹243 crore Series B closed in early 2026.
FoundrPwr #9 is an honest, unfiltered conversation about what it actually takes to build hardware that works at scale.
Who Should Attend:
This event is built for:
Early-stage founders building in robotics, Deeptech, autonomous systems, industrial automation, or allied hardware-first spaces
Founders navigating the specific challenges of capital-intensive, long-cycle product development
Engineers and operators considering the leap to founding their own Deeptech venture
Anyone trying to understand what separates Deeptech/Hardware companies that ship from those that don't
If you're building something where the real world is your test environment, this one is for you.
What Pramod Will Cover:
Pramod will draw on his journey building Unbox Robotics, from founding thesis to global deployments, and share hard-won lessons across:
Why intralogistics in emerging markets needed a fundamentally different approach, and how that conviction shaped every product decision
What it took to go from concept to deploying swarm-intelligence-based multi-robot systems at commercial scale
The real cost of getting things wrong in hardware and how to build systems robust enough to deliver 99.99% accuracy in the field
Scaling a hardware business profitably: the financial discipline, the team-building, and the investor conversations that actually matter
Lessons from commissioning India's first robot-based parcel sortation system at Flipkart, and what that experience taught him before he started Unbox
About Pramod Ghadge & Unbox Robotics:
Pramod V. Ghadge is the Co-founder and CEO of Unbox Robotics. He holds a Master's in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the National University of Singapore and a B.Tech in Production Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai, where he received the JRD Tata Scholarship.
Before founding Unbox, Pramod led Robotics and Automation at Flipkart, where he oversaw the commissioning of India's first robot-based parcel sortation system; nearly 500 robots at the Bangalore Distribution Centre. He has also held technical and commercial roles at Larsen & Toubro, Bosch, Nano Dimension (Israel), and Pirate3D (Singapore).
He co-founded Unbox Robotics in 2019 alongside Shahid Memon, with a conviction that intralogistics in emerging markets needed a more space-efficient, software-defined approach than legacy conveyor and robotic systems could offer.
Since then, Unbox has built and deployed a swarm-intelligence-based multi-robot sortation platform that delivers 99.99% sorting accuracy, improves operator productivity threefold, and reduces sorting floor footprint by 50–70% compared to conventional automation. The company has grown revenue more than 5x year-on-year on a profitable base and now operates across India, the United States, and Europe.
In January 2026, Unbox closed a Series B of ₹243 crores led by ICICI Venture and Redstart Labs (InfoEdge), with F-Prime Capital joining from the US and continued participation from 3one4 Capital and other existing investors.
About Mela Ventures & FoundrPwr:
Mela Ventures is a Bengaluru-based early-stage VC firm founded in 2020 by Krishnakumar Natarajan and Parthasarathy NS, co-founders of Mindtree, which they scaled from a startup to a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. The firm invests exclusively in B2B startups across Deeptech, enterprise technology, and allied sectors, backing companies through a rigorous, research-led process.
FoundrPwr is Mela's ongoing initiative to give back to the founder community - a series of in-person events that bring experienced operators and founders together for honest, practical conversations on what it takes to build. Past speakers have included Rajesh Yabaji (Founder & CEO, BlackBuck), Dilip Kumar (Head of Investments – Health, Rainmatter), and Viren Rasquinha (CEO, Olympic Gold Quest).
FoundrPwr #9 continues that tradition, bringing a founder who has done it in one of the hardest categories to build in.
📅 21st May 2025 | 6:00 PM 📍 BIC, Domlur, Bangalore
Presented by Mela Ventures Community partner: HSR Founders Club
Seats are limited. Register now.