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“We started Taiga Robotics wanting to make search and rescue robots for hazardous environments and were motivated by the published diaries of Fukushima workers where they emphasized the difficulty they had controlling their robots to expand our work,” says Ilija Jovanovic, the Chief Operating Officer of the company.
As supply chain issues started to emerge at the beginning of COVID, Ilija and his co-founder Dmitri Ignakov realized the technology they created could be used to help small- and medium-sized businesses complete certain tasks.
They pivoted.
Today, their pick-and-place robots (called PTeR) are being trained using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help organizations do everything from package and sort products to assist with order fulfilment.
“The automation ecosystem is focused on large-scale and high-throughput solutions,” he says. “But we're building outside of this ecosystem to make a solution for small businesses that are otherwise completely out of reach of conventional automation.”
The setup process to receive a robot is simple: a customer is asked to fill out an application to ensure a PTeR will meet their needs; the client is then asked to send photos of the tasks they want PTeR to complete; the Taiga team trains the robot to perform the task; then the robot is delivered to the company’s facilities to perform the work. The cost to a business is as low as $1,500/month.
Taiga’s offering is so unique that the team at ventureLAB reached out to Ilija and Dmitri to see if they would take part in the 2023 Accelerate AI cohort. The free, comprehensive six-month program helps companies that are looking to solve supply chain issues leveraging AI grow.
“The program sounded like a really good fit since we were coming out of scaleAI,” notes Ilija. “We were interested in ventureLAB’s support capabilities for AI startups as well as how the organization could help us speak to more potential customers. Now that we’re part of the program, we’ve really appreciated the founder-focused community.”
The next big goal for Taiga is to expand all that they do - from building a client database to training more robots.
To do that, Ilija says he and his team are tapping into some of the knowledge they’ve acquired through the Accelerate AI program and are leaning on the learnings they’ve amassed as entrepreneurs.
“A great piece of advice we received is ‘if you don't have customers or aren't getting enough sales, print out your deck and go knocking on doors instead of sitting behind a desk,’” he says. “Talk to your customers, often, and really listen to them and get to know them. The problems that actually need solving are often a lot easier and simpler [to solve] than the mental image of the problem we build from a first conversation.”
About Accelerate AI
Led by our seasoned expert Advisors and business leaders Garry Chan and Krishna Vempati, this free comprehensive 6-month program will propel Accelerate AI companies to solve the modern-day challenges of the supply chain industry by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning into their established product offerings. We are excited to watch the immense growth of these companies as they tackle some of the most challenging entrepreneurial hurdles in technology today.
About ventureLAB
ventureLAB is a leading global founder community for hardware technology and enterprise software companies in Canada. Located at the heart of Ontario’s innovation corridor in York Region, ventureLAB is part of one of the biggest and most diverse tech communities in Canada. Our initiatives focused on raising capital, talent retention, commercializing technology and IP, and customer acquisition have enabled thousands of companies to create over 5,000 jobs and raise more than $340 million in investment capital. At ventureLAB, we grow globally competitive tech titans that build-to-scale in Canada, for global markets.
