Every day, millions of Indians climb into a cab, an auto, a bus or a delivery van and trust a stranger with their safety. The driver is doing their best, the fleet owner is doing their best — but until now, nobody could actually see what was happening inside the vehicle. A Bengaluru startup decided to change that, not with a bigger GPS tracker, but with a pair of eyes that never blink.
Cautio, founded in October 2023 by Ankit Acharya and Pranjal Nadhani, builds AI-powered dashcams and a connected fleet-intelligence platform designed specifically for Indian roads. Its dual cameras watch the road ahead and the people inside, its edge AI reads driver behaviour in real time, and its command centre turns every journey into a stream of live, usable safety intelligence.
Two lenses, one guardian
The heart of the system is Cautio’s AI dual camera. One lens faces the road, the other faces the cabin, and a rear camera completes 360-degree coverage. The company says the cameras stream in Full HD, sharp by day and clear at night, with footage stored securely in the cloud in India and available instantly to fleet operators.
But recording is only the beginning. The company’s Driver Monitoring System watches for fatigue, distraction and seat-belt use, while its Advanced Driver Assistance System watches the road for lane departures, collision risks and overspeeding. When something goes wrong, the system raises an instant alert — and with Smart SOS, one touch triggers live video and alerts for a rapid response. Two-way audio lets the driver, central operations and the command centre talk to each other in the moment, and precision GPS tracking pins every vehicle down to the last metre.
Built for India, on the edge
What makes Cautio different is where its intelligence lives. The company says its edge-first AI processes video on the device itself, rather than waiting for a cloud connection. That matters enormously on Indian routes, where 4G can be patchy, temperatures soar and dust is a constant. Safety alerts cannot wait for a signal bar — and in Cautio’s design, they do not have to.
The platform is built around a 24×7 command centre that analyses millions of video kilometres every day, turning raw footage into driver-safety insights, journey analytics and live alerts. The company says it has already processed more than 27 crore AI alerts, protected more than 33 lakh trips, and contracted more than 15,000 vehicles across ride-hailing, logistics and public transport fleets — operating across 106 cities.
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From the first cab to 10,000 electric three-wheelers
Cautio’s story began with a single customer. In October 2023, a cold email to Vozi Cabs in Bengaluru turned into the company’s first deal — the validation the founders needed to build. From there, the platform spread to fleets including redBus, Namma Yatri and Euro Cars, and to student mobility with Indeanta E-Mobility, where the company says driver phone use fell sharply and fleet utilisation improved.
The biggest deployment yet came in March 2026, when 3ev Industries and 3eco Systems partnered with Cautio to equip 10,000 electric three-wheelers with AI dashcams as a standard, factory-installed feature on every vehicle rolling off 3ev’s production lines. More than 1,200 vehicles were already live across Bengaluru and Chennai at announcement, with the rest rolling out across OEM and fleet platforms. The partners are also investing jointly in research and development, driver training and road-safety advocacy — building safety into the vehicle itself, rather than bolting it on afterwards.
Two wheels, next
Cautio is now taking the same idea to India’s most vulnerable road users: two-wheeler riders. In December 2025 the company acquired BYTES, a Bengaluru startup building vision-based ADAS for two-wheelers, with the BYTES team joining Cautio’s research and development to build rider visibility, real-time risk detection, incident documentation and human-in-the-loop response systems for a vehicle category where safety technology has long been overlooked.
The work is winning recognition. In October 2026, Cautio was named one of eight winners of JSW MG Motor India’s MG Developer Program Season 6, chosen from more than 130 entries, to explore pilot projects with the carmaker and its partners. The company has also been featured by AWS for reimagining fleet safety at scale, and is backed by investors including Antler, 8i Ventures and AU Small Finance Bank.
For Acharya, the mission is personal and simple: every ride deserves a safe return. A dashcam that only records an accident is a witness. Cautio’s is a guardian — watching, warning and learning, on every road, in every vehicle, for every driver and passenger it protects.
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