Pronto Founder’s Provision Labs Acquires Basilisk Industries

Provision Labs, the physical AI venture of Pronto founder Anjali Sardana has acquired Mumbai-based hardware startup Basilisk Industries for an undisclosed sum. Sardana announced the deal via LinkedIn post.

Basilisk founder Shourya Watwani will lead Provision’s hardware efforts and work on its in-house post-processing models. According to Sardana, Watwani and his team have already developed a 3D hand-tracking model, redesigned Provision’s perception hardware and built the first version of a lightweight tactile glove to capture touch data.

Sardana recently launched San Francisco-based Provision Labs to collect data for training and testing physical AI systems, which perform real-world tasks through robots and other machines.

Provision’s launch followed scrutiny of a Pronto pilot in which service professionals wore cameras while cleaning, washing dishes and folding laundry in customers’ homes, raising questions about privacy, consent and data storage. Pronto said customers had to opt in while booking, that the pilot covered less than 0.01% of its users, that it complied with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act and that the footage would not be shared with third-party AI labs.