Scouts closes investment round at Rs.1.6bn valuation

Scouts.io co-founders with investors

• Sri Lankan drone start-up gears up to take on regional intelligent robotics market

Scouts, Sri Lanka’s pioneering intelligent drone and robotics company, has closed a funding round at a valuation of Rs.1.6 billion. 

In a market that has historically exported its engineering talent rather than retaining it, the round represents something more than a financing milestone. The company offers an economically viable solution for security, from small farmers to large solar farms.

Scouts provides drone security services, taking responsibility for the installation and management of the entire solution, making the process convenient for the end users.

Its pilot-less weather-resistant drones use artificial intelligence and machine learning for perimeter security, navigating and detecting security breaches while patrolling continuously across plantations, warehouses and solar farms, significantly increasing the availability of security and monitoring at a fraction of the cost.

What Scouts has built is a complete system: the hardware, software and intelligence that differentiates this solution. Its drones do not simply record; they identify, alert and record evidence of incidents like fires, intruders, open gates, etc. until a response arrives. 

For clients managing large or complex sites, it extends the reach of their security operations in ways that additional headcount alone cannot replicate while turning the existing cameras and motion detectors into active triggers for the drone-based system.

Beyond security applications from plantations and warehouses to energy infrastructure and industrial facility monitoring, Scouts is working on precision agriculture drones for crop health monitoring and detecting early-stage diseases, giving farms and plantations an early warning system that can aid in targeted interventions to mitigate crop loss and damages that would otherwise go undetected.

“We are at a pivotal moment in our history. Software and hardware-based automation are taking over the world at a rapid pace. Scouts aims to utilise these advancements of technology for the good of the world,” said co-founder and CEO Kalana Muthumuni. 

Scouts is invested by SITREK Security Solutions (Pvt.) Ltd, the country’s largest security provider, Janashakthi Group Deputy CEO, First Capital CEO and former Colombo Stock Exchange Chairman Dilshan Wirasekara and Dart Global Group Managing Director Jude Nashitha.