Rotimatic start-ups seeking success

Rotimatic co-founders Rishi Israni and Pranoti Nagarkar have the  answer for 800million Asians in the sub-continent who in the past have painstakingly made rotis by hand, and it  will now revolutionise home cooking in South Asian households. You place flour and water in compartments – no measurements required ,  tell the machine how many rotis you want, and out pop fully cooked and puffed rotis at a rate of one-a-minute. Pranoti Nagarkar, Indian-origin  Mehcanical, electrical and computer engineer in Singapore who invented an automatic one-minute roti maker machine seven years back has now fetched a second round of investment of $11.5 million .

Pranoti, a strong believer in simplicity,  always dreamed of becoming an inventor. Encouraged always by her parents to speak her mind, she loves to question assumptions and norms. With a flair for engineering and the hands on approach, she  went into Product Design. Before Zimplistic, she led a team that worked on a robotic product for a renowned brand, from concept to manufacturing.  She has authored eight patents in Zimplistic. Pranoti Nagarkar-Israni, from the National University of Singapore, came up with a prototype for an automatic roti maker which won her the ‘Start-Up Singapore’ competition in 2009. She later floated a product design company called Zimplistic with her husband to promote the roti maker brand called Rotimatic. Zimplistic which has now announced an investment of $11.5 million from Southeast Asia-based NSI Ventures and Germany-based Robert Bosch Venture Capital, web portal TechinAsia.com reported. The automatic roti maker is smart enough to use its 15 sensors to figure out the ingredients put in it and the measures in which to combine them. The user needs to put in the ingredients in the given containers and press a button. Within a minute, a flat, circular roti slides out of the machine – much like a sheet of paper that comes out of a photocopier. The machine also allows its users to customise the doughballs and flour discs. Within a week of the launch of its beta version last year, $5 million worth of roti makers priced at $999 each were sold and Zimplistic had to close pre-orders. ‘With this funding, Zimplistic plans to finish the Rotimatic beta, accelerate manufacturing rollout and set up operations in international markets to fulfil the big demand,’ Israni said. This new round of funding has been secured just few months after raising the first round of investment worth more than $1 million from NSI Ventures.