If Zimplistic has their way, the prayers of all Indian cooks, homemakers and kitchen-dwellers are about to come true.
Pranoti Nagarkar, an Indian born Singapore resident and inventor of Rotimatic – a robot for making rotis/chappatis in one minute, received a second round investment of $11.5 million, a media report said.
Nagarkar did Mechanical Engineering from National University of Singapore and developed a prototype for automated roti maker seven years ago and won ‘Start-up Singapore’ award in 2009. Following the success of her automatic rotimaker, now called Rotimatic, Nagarkar and her husband Rishi Israni co-founded a product design company – Zimplistic to promote the brand.
Rishi, a serial entrepreneur and former founder of a Singapore based mobile security company, helped raise $3 million from private investors earlier and their company now received a whopping $11.5 million investment from NSI Ventures and Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
“It has been an amazing year for us and these new partnerships will only help to improve what we see as a revolutionary product that enables families to eat healthier”, Israni quoted as saying.
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 investment the couple plans to expand the business to international markets to meet growing demands for Rotimatic.
Zimplistic already has 5,000 pre-orders for Rotimatic and counting. The Rotimatic currently costs US$599 and Zimplistic has already patented 8 technologies for the product. As of now, pre-orders for the device are sold out until the end of 2016 and aspiring buyers have to sign up for a waitlist.