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Entrepreneurs Ankur Singh, Abhishek Kumar, Prakhar Nigam, and Ankit Agarwal identified a glaring gap in the manufacturing industry that was lacking digital transformation and efficiency. Based on their experience working in large corporations, manufacturing, and energy companies, they observed that companies desired efficiency improvements but relied on generic, often paper-based processes. “The critical problem was the failure to utilise core data that could significantly impact efficiency and performance. Specifically, manufacturers were not using the valuable data available directly from the machines on the shop floor. This data remained untapped because there were not many tools, even globally, designed to acquire it. We realised this lost data represented a significant source of efficiency improvement,” Singh tells YourStory. To bring a change, the quartet co-founded UGX.AI in 2023, with Singh as the CEO, Kumar as the CBO, Nigam as the CTO, and Agarwal as the COO. The Gurugram-based startup addresses inefficiencies in manufacturing by extracting and analysing high-quality shop floor and machine data to optimise production—a process that is continuously being developed for three years now starting in 2022 and launched in 2023. The company has a larger vision of supporting India's ambition to be a globally competitive manufacturing market, which requires manufacturers to optimise efficiency at every level. The goal is to help clients optimise production (e.g., taking a 60% efficiency level closer to 90%) without necessarily adding new machinery or people. The 32-member startup has 22 B2B clients and has amassed orders worth $1 million this year alone. The technology The deeptech startup offers a comprehensive technology stack specifically focused on improving the production process and operational effectiveness of discrete manufacturers, such as those in automotive and electronics. The solution is delivered as a comprehensive and complex stack consisting of hardware, middleware, and software. A specific hardware component is its Industrial Edge Gateway (a device that connects industrial equipment with cloud servers), and the startup is working to launch version two. The company is also launching mission-specific AI agents for manufacturing. These agents integrate high-quality machine data with enterprise data (ERP, inventory) to inform managers and operators on how to improve efficiency, optimise costing approaches, and analyse inventory. The integrated solution is sold to enterprise customers for prices typically ranging from Rs 10–40 lakh. “We are in a unique position, where we have not just the enterprise data, but also the data from the ERP inventory and so much more. But we also have data from the machines and the actual performance of production. And this is time series data. It's very high-quality data, which tells so much about the actual production process. So, this data will be used by AI agents to inform the operators or the managers as to how they can improve the efficiency,” explains Singh. On the manufacturing sector CBO Kumar says that there are more than two lakh factories operational in India, contributing about 18% to the GDP, and this number is poised to grow over the next few years. He believes this is the best time to adopt more solutions which would accelerate smart manufacturing in India. “A lot of data, compliance and efficiency-driven factors are coming into the picture in the manufacturing industry. We compete globally with companies like Siemens and Rockwell Automation, and then we have Indian startups like Leanworx Technologies. We maintain our edge with our hands in hardware, middleware and software layers,” he says. The deeptech startup raised $1 million in a seed round led by Blue Ocean Venture Partners in October 2025. Kumar says it will be invested towards making it a category leader in the industrial machine communication structure and related Edge AI infrastructure. The CBO adds that it also plans to take its solutions to Indian manufacturing hubs: automotive, electronics and pharmaceutical, and expand across the USA and the Middle East by 2027. UGX.AI is part of YourStory’s Tech30 cohort—a selection of India's most promising startups of 2025—unveiled at TechSparks Bengaluru.
