Pronto Founder’s Provision Labs Acquires Hardware Startup Basilisk Industries

Provision Labs, the brainchild of Pronto founder Anjali Sardana, has recently acquired Mumbai-based hardware startup Basilisk Industries, though the acquisition's undisclosed sum remains confidential. As reported by Sardana on LinkedIn, Basilisk Industries' co-founder Shourya Watwani will spearhead Provision's hardware initiatives and contribute to its in-house post-processing models.

Established in 2023, Basilisk Industries focused on perception technologies that enable machines to comprehend their environment. Sardana revealed that Watwani and his team have already created a 3D hand-tracking model, revamped Provision's perception hardware, and constructed the inaugural version of a lightweight tactile glove for capturing touch-related data.

In the wake of its recent launch, Provision Labs is actively expanding its engineering and research teams in San Francisco, Toronto, and Bengaluru. The company is currently recruiting professionals for roles in computer vision, perception, tactile data, environment reconstruction, and hardware development.

Sardana introduced Provision Labs with the objective of gathering data for the training and evaluation of physical AI systems, which empower robots and other machines to execute real-world tasks. The startup plans to procure training data from expert professionals across various industries worldwide to facilitate developers in deploying their physical AI models.

Initially, Provision Labs faced criticism following scrutiny of Pronto's household recording pilot, which involved service professionals wearing cameras as they performed tasks such as cleaning, washing dishes, and folding laundry. The utilization of footage recorded within customers' homes to generate training data for physical AI and robotics systems sparked concerns about privacy, consent, and data storage.

Pronto maintained that customers had to explicitly consent when booking and that the pilot encompassed less than 0.01% of its user base. Furthermore, Pronto asserted that the pilot adhered to India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, emphasizing that the footage would not be shared with third-party AI labs.