Bengaluru's Minus Zero makes self-driving cars street-smart for India

Bengaluru-based deep tech startup Minus Zero has announced a major breakthrough in autonomous driving technology tailored specifically for India’s complex urban traffic environment. The company has unveiled the country’s first end-to-end autopilot system capable of navigating dense, unstructured traffic without the need for high-definition maps or lane markings.

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Tested on the notoriously chaotic streets of Bengaluru, the vision-based autopilot system is designed to handle unpredictable elements such as animals, push-carts, and two-wheelers like Yulu bikes. Unlike conventional systems that rely on rule-based approaches and annotated data, Minus Zero’s solution is built on foundational AI models trained using self-supervised learning. This allows the system to learn from raw video data at scale—without requiring human-labeled datasets.

According to the company, this “AI-first” method enables the autopilot to make intelligent driving decisions in real-time, even in scenarios where traditional Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) often fail. With a sharp rise in Level 1 and Level 2 ADAS adoption in India, Minus Zero sees a growing demand and readiness for more advanced levels like L2+, L2++, and L3 systems that offer greater autonomy.

The startup emphasized that while 90% of existing ADAS solutions are deployed in developed countries, 85% of the world’s road accidents occur in emerging nations like India. This underscores the urgent need for context-aware autopilot systems in such regions.

This milestone builds on Minus Zero’s earlier achievement of launching India’s first fully driverless vehicle for controlled in-campus mobility. Their latest full-stack autopilot platform utilizes only cameras—eschewing expensive sensors like LiDAR—and is completely map-free, making it more scalable for diverse and unpredictable driving environments.

Currently collaborating with major OEMs and engaging others, Minus Zero aims to bring the technology to production within two years. The move could mark a transformative shift in how autonomous vehicles are designed for emerging markets, potentially making safer and smarter mobility accessible to millions.