Coratia raises ₹18 crore to build underwater robots for the Indian Navy

Coratia Technologies, a startup that builds underwater robots, has raised ₹18 crore in a bridge round led by MGF Kavachh. The company announced the round on its own website on 29 October 2026.

A bridge round is a smaller raise between two big funding rounds. It keeps a company moving while it grows into its next major round.

What Coratia makes

Coratia builds remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), small robot submarines that are controlled from the surface. It also builds autonomous surface vehicles, boats that drive themselves. Its robots carry cameras, sonar and GPS so they can inspect things underwater where it is dark, muddy or unsafe for divers.

Its flagship machine, the Jalasimha underwater ROV, has reached Technology Readiness Level 9 (TRL-9), the company says. TRL-9 is the top of the scale. It means a product is proven in real working conditions, not just in a lab.

The startup was founded by Debendra Pradhan (CEO) and Biswajit Swain (CTO). It lists offices in Rourkela (at the NIT Rourkela incubator, FTBI), Bhubaneswar and Bengaluru.

Where the money goes

Coratia says the funding will help it:

• deliver its ₹66 crore Indian Navy contract, won under the defence ministry's iDEX innovation programme;
• speed up R&D on new products;
• scale up manufacturing and deployment for defence and critical infrastructure.

This is a follow-on investment from MGF Kavachh, which backed Coratia before. The company says it raised ₹17 crore in 2025 from MGF Kavachh, Piper and SIDBI in a Pre-Series A round. That puts its disclosed funding at about ₹35 crore.

Why Indian waters are hard

In its announcement, CEO Debendra Pradhan said Indian waters bring "high turbidity, silt, low visibility and changing currents". In simple words, the water is cloudy and moves a lot, so robots built for clear foreign waters often struggle here. Coratia says it focuses on shrinking its technology while making its robots smarter and easier to deploy.

More than the Navy

Coratia lists the Indian Navy, Indian Oil, Indian Railways, Tata Steel, Hindalco, SAIL, Jindal Steel and Power and NIT Rourkela among its clients and partners.

Its robots can also inspect dams, ports, bridges, pipelines, offshore platforms and undersea cables. The company points to a timely use: the Ministry of Jal Shakti is targeting December 2026 for safety reviews of specified dams under the Dam Safety Act, 2021. Underwater robots can check submerged walls, gates and spillways without sending divers into danger.

Day1 take

Defence deep tech with roots in a tier-2 city is getting real money. Coratia keeps an office at an NIT incubator in Rourkela, and it now holds a ₹66 crore Navy order. For founders in hard tech, the lesson is clear: a government programme like iDEX can be the first big customer that makes investors take you seriously.

Sources: Coratia Technologies announcement (primary, 29 Oct 2026), Coratia Technologies website. Lead via Entrackr and ET Entrepreneur reports (29 Oct 2026). The ₹35 crore total is our own addition of the two rounds the company disclosed.