Industrial AI software for heavy industry
Industrial inspection data, turned into maintenance decisions.
Volar Alta Private Limited builds the software layer for industrial inspection. Our platform brings data from drones, crawlers, climbing robots, ROVs and fixed sensors into one record for every asset, and turns it into defect registers, risk rankings and maintenance plans.
Hardware agnostic
Sector agnostic
Built from six years of field data
1,000+
industrial assets inspected
50+
industrial plants
6
years of field deployments
5
heavy industry sectors
Trusted by industry leaders.
Why it matters
Every inspection should improve the next maintenance decision.
A large plant runs inspections every week, using drones, crawlers, rope access teams and fixed sensors, often from several vendors. The results usually arrive as separate reports in different formats, one site at a time.
Volar Alta brings every result into a single record for each asset. Condition, trend and risk become visible across units and sites, so reliability teams plan maintenance on evidence and leadership sees the whole portfolio in one view.
Hardware agnostic
Use the robots and sensors you already have.
The platform reads the output, whatever captured it. Keep your current vendors, add new capture methods as the programme grows, and compare every result on one standard.
Visual · Thermal · Ultrasonic · Acoustic · Vibration
The platform
From inspection to decision in four steps.
The same four steps run for every asset, every sector and every source of data.
01 · Capture
Every robot, sensor and field team feeds one platform.
Data arrives in the format each source produces: images, thermal files, ultrasonic readings, video and sensor streams.
No change to your current vendors
Batch uploads and live streams
02 · Standardise
Every result lands on the right asset, in one language.
Findings are mapped to your asset hierarchy and classified on one defect taxonomy, so results from different sources can be compared.
Plant, unit, asset and component
One taxonomy across methods and vendors
03 · Analyse
AI models find defects and track how they change.
Defects are detected and classified, degradation is tracked between inspections and remaining life is estimated for each component.
Detection across visual and thermal data
Trends from repeat inspections
04 · Decide
Assets are ranked by risk, and the work follows.
Reports, inspection intervals and maintenance actions come from one ranking, with the evidence behind every item.
Reports ready for engineer sign-off
Work orders and intervals from the ranking
Sector agnostic
One platform, configured for your sector.
The core stays the same across industries. Each sector brings its own asset library, defect focus and inspection codes.
Cement · Steel and metals · Oil and gas · Power · Chemicals
Country level
Regulation, codes and reporting formats for each market.
KPI level
The measures your reliability and leadership teams already track.
Who we work with
Built for the teams responsible for asset integrity.
Heavy industry
Asset owners
One view of asset condition across every plant.
For heads of reliability, maintenance and operations who manage large asset bases across several sites.
Every inspection, from any vendor or robot, in one record per asset.
Maintenance priorities ranked by risk, with the evidence behind each one.
Earlier sight of degradation between shutdowns.
Consistent reporting across plants and regions.
Where to start: IARA for the organisation, or a pilot on your priority assets.
Testing, inspection, certification
TIC firms
Scale digital inspection across your network.
For leadership, digital transformation and AI heads at testing, inspection and certification firms.
Reports drafted from field data, reviewed and signed by your inspectors.
One defect classification across inspectors, sites and countries.
A client portal that delivers findings in one place.
A clear route from pilots to digital services at scale.
Where to start: IARA, to baseline AI and robotics readiness across your network.
IARA · Industrial AI & Robotics Acceleration
A clear path to AI and robotics, from leadership to the field.
IARA gives leadership an evidence-based baseline of where the organisation stands, a sequenced blueprint of what to do next, and a team that builds it with you on the Volar Alta platform.
Stage 1
Baseline
Readiness measured across process, foundation, infrastructure and technology, from the leadership team to the field.
Stage 2
Blueprint
A sequenced plan with priorities, investment, ownership and the business case for each step.
Stage 3
Build
The blueprint implemented on the platform, with progress tracked against the original baseline.
Result · anonymised
Readiness profile of a TIC organisation in South Asia
Process maturity was the strongest area. Infrastructure and technology set the pace for everything that followed, so the blueprint sequenced them first.
The blueprint modelled an illustrative margin path from about 10% to about 20%.
Where IARA applies
Heavy industry · TIC · Battery recycling · EU AI Act readiness
Consulting
Setting up digital inspection programmes for heavy industry.
For operators moving from periodic manual inspection to a planned digital programme. We design the programme, select methods and hardware, run the pilot and scale it across sites. It runs on the Volar Alta platform from the first day, so it keeps running after handover.
Phases shown in sequence. Duration depends on the number of sites and asset classes.
What you receive
Inspection strategy for each asset class
Hardware and vendor selection, independent of any manufacturer
Data standards and a common defect taxonomy
Reporting and KPI framework for site and leadership teams
Training for site and reliability teams
Built on six years of field deployments across 1,000+ assets at 50+ plants.
Security and governance
Enterprise controls from the start.
Inspection data describes critical assets. The platform is built to the standards enterprise security and procurement teams expect.
Cloud agnostic
Deploys on the major public clouds, in the region your policy requires.
Access and audit
Role-based access, encryption and a full audit trail of every change.
Your data stays yours
Customers own their inspection data and decide how it is used.
AI governance
Model governance designed with the EU AI Act in view, with human sign-off on findings.
International
Built in India. Growing across Europe.
Headquartered in Pune, with deployments across India and a growing base of programmes and partners in Europe.
Pune
Headquarters, engineering and delivery
Deployments at 50+ plants across India
Paris
IndiaAI Startups Global programme at Station F with HEC Paris
Graduate of Creative Destruction Lab Paris
Germany
Engagement with the German Indian Innovation Corridor (GIIC)
Italy
Government of India official business delegation, 2025
India-Italy deep tech delegation
Recognition
Recognised by government, industry and global programmes.
2026
Top 3, AI by HER: Global Impact Challenge
2026
Named among 9 women building AI that matters
2026
Convened the Industrial AI Roundtable, an official pre-summit dialogue
IndiaAI Impact Summit · Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai
2025
Selected among 10 Indian AI startups for the IndiaAI Startups Global programme
2025
Government of India official business delegation to Italy
India-Italy deep tech delegation
2025
Winner, Maruti Suzuki Incubation Programme
Cohort 3, run with NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore
2024
Award, nasscom Smart Manufacturing Research Conclave
Mumbai
2023
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women
Founder programme
2023
Winner, TiE Pune Global Pitch Competition
2023
Spright Entrepreneurship Award, Women to Watch 2022
2022
Featured among 75 women entrepreneurs, Innovations for You
2020
Featured among Asia's Most Influential Women in Renewable Energy
Programmes and memberships
India AI Mission
Member
NVIDIA Inception
Member
Creative Destruction Lab Paris
Graduate
Station F · HEC Paris
IndiaAI Startups Global
NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore
Incubated
DPIIT
Recognised startup
Grants and programme support from the British High Commission, the Government of India, Alstom, Accenture and IIM Bangalore.
In the media
The Economic Times
Analytics India Magazine
Press Information Bureau
Hindustan Times
The Indian Express
Featured and recognised by
Insights
Research and views for industrial leaders.
Written by Niharika Kolte Alekar and the Volar Alta team for CXOs, digital transformation heads and AI leaders in heavy industry and TIC.
CXO read · 10-part series
The AI Clock is TIC-king
What AI adoption means for testing, inspection and certification over the next three to five years, and what leadership teams can do now. Issue 1 looks at AI adoption and EBIT return.
Series · 5 parts
The Foundation Series
What it takes to become AI native, one foundation at a time: economics, data, workflow, people and oversight, and pilot to scale.
Whitepaper
The Industrial Intelligence Divide
Our paper on the gap in industrial AI adoption across heavy industry, and the steps operators can take to close it.
Leadership
The people behind Volar Alta.
The team combines computer vision and machine learning engineers with a bench of NDT and reliability specialists, each with more than 25 years in the field.
Niharika Kolte Alekar
Founder and CEO
Niharika founded Volar Alta in 2020. Before that she worked in investment banking and in consulting at PwC and KPMG, focused on infrastructure, energy and utilities.
Due diligence on industrial assets showed her how little reliable condition data most operators have. She built Volar Alta to give heavy industry that data, and the software to act on it.
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women · CDL Paris · Station F · HEC Paris · Spright Entrepreneurship Award, Women And Drones
Shishir Kolte
Co-founder and Product Lead
Shishir leads product for the Volar Alta platform, from customer and site requirements through to field validation with inspection teams in live heavy-industry deployments. A computer engineer by training, he also serves as a Director on the company's board.
Computer engineer · Board Director
Ways to start
Four ways to start working together.
Briefing
Leadership briefing
A working session with your leadership team on where AI and robotics fit in your inspection and maintenance operations.
Best for: CXOs and transformation heads
Diagnose
IARA
Baseline, blueprint and build plan for AI and robotics across the organisation.
Best for: Organisations planning a multi-year programme
Prove
Platform pilot
The platform on your priority assets, with results measured against today's process.
Best for: Reliability and inspection teams
Scale
Inspection programme
Design and roll-out of a digital inspection programme across sites.
Best for: Multi-plant operators
Questions
Frequently asked questions.
Short answers about the company, the platform and how to start.
What does Volar Alta do?
Volar Alta Private Limited is an industrial AI software company headquartered in Pune, India. Its platform brings inspection data from drones, crawlers, climbing robots, ROVs and fixed sensors into one record for every asset, and turns it into defect registers, risk rankings, remaining-life estimates and maintenance plans for heavy industry. Volar Alta also runs IARA, the Industrial AI & Robotics Acceleration programme.
Is Volar Alta a drone company?
No. Volar Alta is a hardware-agnostic software company. Drones are one of several data sources the platform reads, alongside crawlers, climbing robots, ROVs, fixed sensors and field teams.
What is IARA?
IARA stands for Industrial AI & Robotics Acceleration. It gives leadership a baseline of the organisation's readiness for AI and robotics, a sequenced blueprint of what to do next, and implementation of that blueprint on the Volar Alta platform.
Which industries does Volar Alta work with?
Volar Alta works with cement, steel and metals, oil and gas, power and chemicals, and with the testing, inspection and certification firms that serve them. The platform has been used on more than 1,000 assets at more than 50 industrial plants.
Do we need to change our inspection vendors or robots?
No. The platform reads the output of the hardware you already use, whichever vendor supplies it. New capture methods can be added as the programme grows.
How does an engagement start?
Most engagements start with a leadership briefing. From there, organisations choose IARA, a platform pilot on priority assets, or a full digital inspection programme across sites.
Where does Volar Alta operate?
Volar Alta is headquartered in Pune, India, with deployments across Indian heavy industry. In Europe it works through the IndiaAI Startups Global programme at Station F with HEC Paris, Creative Destruction Lab Paris and industry networks in Germany.
Contact
Talk to us about your inspection programme.
Tell us about your assets and your goals. We will come back with a proposed first step, usually a leadership briefing.