The Startup Teaching India’s Roads to Warn Us Before They Fail

Rasta.AI, a Pune-based startup, uses artificial intelligence to detect and predict road damage by turning vehicles into sensors, aiming to prevent accidents. The company has surveyed over 10,000 kilometers of road and works with government agencies like Maharashtra's Public Works Department.

Member-only story The Startup Teaching India’s Roads to Warn Us Before They Fail Inside Rasta.AI’s mission to turn every passing vehicle into a sensor, and every pothole into data that arrives before disaster does There is a particular kind of dread that comes from hitting a pothole at speed on a wet night. The car lurches, the wheel fights back, and for a second, control is not guaranteed. For Rahul Andhale, that second turned into something longer: a car carrying him and four friends spun a full 180 degrees on a rain-slicked Indian road after striking a hidden pothole. Nobody was hurt. But the moment didn’t fade the way near-misses usually do. It stayed with him as evidence of something broken — not just the road surface, but the entire system meant to catch problems like it before they became dangerous. That experience became the founding insight behind Rasta.AI, a Pune-based company building artificial intelligence tools to detect, predict, and report road damage before it costs someone their life. Today, the company’s technology has been used to survey more than 10,000 kilometres of road, has been deployed by government agencies including Maharashtra’s Public Works Department, and has picked up recognition from NASSCOM, MCCIA, and international forums including PIARC’s World Road Congress network and…