How Octobotics Is Saving Human Lives By Placing Robots In Hazardous Industrial Jobs

In July 2025, two field operators working with Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) died after they were exposed to hazardous vapours while investigating a malfunction in a storage tank. 

This is the morbid reality that many face during regular inspections. And this barely scrapes the surface. From a ship’s ballast compartments to offshore structures, inspection workers often face other significant risks too – falls, exposure to toxic gases and oxygen-deficient environments. 

Having witnessed several casualties during industrial inspections, Ishan Bhatnagar and Gulshan Kumar decided that it was time to put a stop to these life-claiming incidents. They banded together and started Octobotics in 2020 to solve this problem. 

Headquartered in Delhi NCR, Octobotics has built magnetic crawler robots that can climb steel structures, operate ultrasonic sensors across surfaces and generate inspection reports.

“We watched people risk their lives and sometimes lose them, just to determine whether a ship, tank or pipeline was safe. We believed a robot should be doing that job instead,” said Octobotics founder Bhatnagar. 

In the five years since its inception, the startup has built two prototypes that cater to a wide gamut of sectors, such as oil and gas, marine and railways. It recently also raised ₹10 Cr in its seed funding round from Navam Capital and BYT Capital. 

From Dorms To Robots 

Bhatnagar and Kumar shared a dorm room while studying engineering at the Marine Engineering and Research Institute, Kolkata. They eventually graduated and went their separate ways into offshore careers. 

In 2014, Bhatnagar was working with a Norwegian oil and gas company as an engineer, overseeing the operations of very large crude carriers (VLCCs). Gulshan, meanwhile, was working as an engineer with a Belgian company, DEME Group, a contractor for offshore energy, dredging and marine infrastructure. 

By the mid-2010s, both were in mid-management roles, earning upwards of $10,000 a month. The work took them to rigs, vessels, and industrial plants across the world. And it showed them, repeatedly, what happened when inspections went wrong.

“In 2017, someone fell from a height of 40 meters, and their head opened up,” Bhatnagar recalled.

In 2020, they left their jobs, pooled their savings, and incorporated Octobotics. Initially, the cofounders experimented with aerial inspection. The duo built a drone-based inspection platform, carrying cameras and sensors, which hovered alongside steel structures to scan them from a distance. 

While the hypothesis was reasonable as drones were becoming cheaper and more capable, the plan didn’t work. The real breakthrough came a year later in 2021, when the two built their prototype – a magnetic crawler robot.

The same year, Octobotics filed its first patent on a robotic arm design, and it was eventually granted. Two more patents followed, both covering applications of non-destructive testing technology in railways and oil and gas. 

The startup today holds three granted patents, with two more under review and three additional filings planned in the coming months. But what are these patents powering?

The Tech Of Listening To Steel

The startup has two major products in its portfolio: a magnetic crawler robot and a ten-metre pole-mounted inspection system called ReachMaster.

Octobotics’ robot uses magnetic adhesion to grip steel surfaces, crawl across them and press ultrasonic sensors directly against the material to detect cracks, corrosion and internal defects. In line with this, most may think that the startup’s edge lies in hardware.

But Bhatnagar says that Octobotics’ expertise sits well at the intersection of metallurgy, non-destructive testing (NDT), software engineering and robotics. For context, NDT is the art of evaluating the integrity or defects of a structure without altering its original use.

At the heart of Octobotics’ tech stack is phased array ultrasonics, which works on the same premise as a medical ultrasound. Sound waves are sent into a material, and when they hit a defect, they reflect. The system reads those reflections and maps what lies beneath the surface.

But unlike a standard ultrasound that sends a single wave, a phased array can send waves with multiple channels simultaneously at controlled angles. This produces a detailed picture of cracks, corrosion and other defects, allowing Octobotics to pinpoint their location, size and depth.

The startup’s tech stack does not merely stop at hardware, it extends to software as well. 

Octobotics also uses test samples, with defects of known sizes and locations, to train its robots. By analysing the ultrasonic signals, the software learns to identify the presence, location and severity of defects with increasing accuracy. This forms the core of the robot’s training and development process.

Having cracked the hardware, the deeptech startup is now moving to its next phase of execution and debuting new products.

The Modular Inspection Layer

Octobotics initially sold its robots in two separate variants. While the Weld Sensei was built for weld inspection, the Track Sensei catered to ultrasonic testing (UT) gridding (measuring defects and corrosion across metal surfaces like pipes and storage tanks). 

But it is now phasing out these robots for newer products. “We received strong feedback from customers that our previous-generation robots were too heavy, weighing around 37 kg on average,” Bhatnagar added.

The startup is now working on a single modular platform under 15 kilograms, which can carry both inspection technologies (weld and UT gridding) through interchangeable modules. The new models are set to debut around August 15th, and will focus on India and the Middle East as the initial focus markets. 

Speaking about its clientele, Octobotics claims to have eight commercial enterprises under its belt spanning three sectors. These include Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), among others. However, half of its revenue still comes from companies in overseas markets like Singapore, Greece, and the Middle East. 

Ahead of the launch of its new offerings, the startup has now also pivoted to a service-based revenue model. Under this, Octobotics deploys two field teams, each equipped with a robot, and charges customers on a per-inspection basis. 

A typical storage tank inspection costs around ₹10 Lakh and is completed in about two days, compared to nearly ten days using conventional manual methods. For more complex assets such as refinery cracker units, inspection contracts can generate ₹20 Lakh to ₹25 Lakh per job. 

However, Octobotics aspires to move towards a distribution model where robots are rented to third-party vendors who conduct inspections independently. It also plans to pair its hardware with a SaaS reporting layer to bring an additional stream of revenue.

Nevertheless, the Delhi-NCR-based startup continues to see healthy traction. It closed FY26 with revenues of ₹1.94 Cr, with a target of hitting ₹6 Cr in top line in the ongoing fiscal year (FY27).

While the target is not small by any means, the startup is banking on its hardware-first, service playbook to offer faster and affordable inspections for large industrial giants. While the story looks compelling on paper, can Octobotics eventually evolve from a promising pilot vendor to a scalable industrial inspection partner?

The post How Octobotics Is Saving Human Lives By Placing Robots In Hazardous Industrial Jobs appeared first on Inc42 Media.