Chennai:  Ashok Leyland, the Indian flagship of the Hinduja Group and the country’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturer announced a strategic alliance with Minus Zero, India's leading autonomous driving technology startup. This long-term partnership aims to revolutionise commercial trucking through the deployment of autonomous solutions at scale.

The initial focus of this collaboration will be on developing tailored autonomous trucking solutions for ports, factory operations and corporate campuses. Future endeavors include expanding into hub-to-hub applications and long-haul trucking, subject to evolving regulatory frameworks surrounding autonomous driving.

At the core of this alliance is the seamless integration of Minus Zero's industry-first autonomous driving platform leveraging its pioneering nature-inspired AI technology, into Ashok Leyland’s fleet of commercial vehicles. Leveraging Ashok Leyland's esteemed product portfolio and safety standards alongside Minus Zero’s expertise in self-driving technology, the collaboration aims for safe and scalable adoption of autonomous driving in commercial vehicles. 

With global regulations and infrastructure evolving to support autonomous driving, this collaboration can extend to offer joint product offerings to international markets.

N. Saravanan, Chief Technology Officer, Ashok Leyland said "Ashok Leyland has been looking for ways to reduce the cost of logistics in India in line with the Government’s National Logistics Policy. We see a role for autonomous driving in select sectors in achieving this and we have been partnering pioneering startups in this area. Minus Zero’s capabilities and plans impressed us, and we are excited to be working with them to develop India-specific solutions, that can be scaled globally. We see spin-off benefits in developing cost-effective active safety solutions to reduce the road accidents”

Gagandeep Reehal, CEO and Co-founder, Minus Zero said  "Ashok Leyland brings decades of experience in delivering high quality products at scale and we're excited to partner with them in this journey of accelerating autonomous driving in India and globally. With our Nature-inspired AI, we are bringing a paradigm shift by building foundational AI models for autonomous driving. This partnership marks the beginning of India's Autonomous Driving story.”

Pioneers in the Commercial Vehicle (CV) space, Ashok Leyland is a flagship of the Hinduja group, and is the 2nd largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in India, and 4th largest manufacturer of buses and 19th largest manufacturer of trucks in the world. Headquartered in Chennai, with 7 manufacturing plants in India, a bus manufacturing facility in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE), and one at Leeds, United Kingdom, Ashok Leyland has a well-diversified portfolio and an international footprint. Ashok Leyland has recently been ranked as 34th best brand in India.

Minus Zero is India's first startup building foundational models for autonomous driving delivered as an industry-first intelligent platform to automotive OEMs to enable autopilot & self-driving capabilities for next-gen vehicles across all geographies.

Having demonstrated India’s first autonomous concept vehicle, the zPod in June 2023, Minus Zero is backed by leading investors like Chiratae Ventures and more. Minus Zero is committed to doing foundational AI research for autonomous driving in India for the global market.