Vayu Robotics’ Product Development Strategy: Balancing Customer Feedback with Platform Vision

Building a platform company presents a unique challenge: how do you serve multiple verticals without diluting your core vision? In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Anand Gopalan from Vayu Robotics reveals their approach to this fundamental tension.

The Platform Vision

“The founding idea of bio robotics is that we want to build a nervous system that powers any mobile robot and allows it to see and move through the world safely,” Anand explains. This broad vision could easily lead to scattered development, but Vayu Robotics maintains focus through careful customer selection.

Strategic Customer Selection

Rather than pursuing every opportunity, they segment their market into specific categories. “There’s probably like three types of customers,” Anand shares. “There’s customers who have robots already, who want their robots to see the world better or move through the world better… customers who are looking for either sensing technology or looking for both sensing and drive technology… and customers who have an automation need.”

Building the Feedback Loop

Their product development process is anchored by tight customer feedback loops. “There’s a tight feedback loop with these first group of customers who are constantly basically calling you and giving you feedback and saying, this doesn’t work, or this could better, and you’re refining the product as you’re also working with these customers to make their end system successful,” Anand reveals.

The Economics-First Approach

Before writing any code, they established clear economic guardrails. “The first thing we did was we built a spreadsheet to define what the right unit economics of a solution would look like. And then we live by that spreadsheet,” Anand notes. This financial blueprint helps them evaluate feature requests and development priorities against business viability.

Managing the Platform-Vertical Tension

The challenge of serving multiple verticals while maintaining platform cohesion was a central consideration. “We always had this tension about do we go horizontal, or do we go vertical and deep?” Anand shares. Their decision to go horizontal required careful management of customer requests to ensure they built reusable solutions rather than one-off features.

Curating Early Customers

Their approach to product development starts with customer selection. “We are essentially in that first push into the market where you’re not trying to basically get every single customer,” Anand explains. “You’re trying to actually carefully curate your first group of customers who can truly make you successful and also make your product the best product that it can be.”

This selective approach helps them maintain platform focus while still being responsive to customer needs. They look for customers whose requirements align with their broader vision, using individual feedback to inform platform-level improvements rather than custom solutions.

Looking ahead, their product strategy aims to position them as the fundamental platform for robotics innovation. “In three to five years, I would hope that we are sort of that nervous system that powers this wave of robots that we see coming clearly,” Anand envisions.

For founders building platform companies, Vayu Robotics offers valuable lessons in balancing customer responsiveness with platform integrity. The key lies not in saying yes to every feature request, but in finding customers whose needs align with your platform vision and using their feedback to build solutions that serve the broader market.