Cautio, India’s leading video telematics company, has announced the acquisition of BYTES, a Deep-Tech startup backed by Nikhil Kamath’s WTFund, IIT Mandi Catalyst, NSRCEL- IIM B & Startup Karnataka, marking a major step in the company’s mission to build India’s most comprehensive, intelligence-driven road safety platform. This integration strengthens Cautio’s long-term commitment to protecting every moving Indian, especially the millions who depend on two-wheelers daily.
India’s roads record one of the world’s highest accident burdens, more than 1.5 lakh fatalities every year, with two-wheelers accounting for nearly three-fourths of these losses. Behind every number lies a human story: a delivery partner rushing to meet timelines, a student navigating congested lanes, a woman riding home late at night, a worker commuting on unsafe, unmonitored roads.
Most of these incidents go unreported and unseen, creating massive blind spots in India’s mobility infrastructure. To bridge this critical gap, Cautio is bringing the BYTES team into its mission of building India’s first full-stack safety infrastructure.
BYTES has been one of the few first deep-tech teams in the country building specifically over the two-wheeler safety challenge, a domain that requires a fundamentally different engineering philosophy due to: lack of cabin space, fixed mounts, and reliable power sources; unpredictable rider behaviour; chaotic, dense, and fast-changing road conditions; extreme hardware and cost constraints; the vulnerability of riders compared to drivers in enclosed vehicles.
Cautio already powers safety for autos, cabs, buses, logistics fleets, and enterprise mobility, analysing millions of video kilometres with a 24×7 Command Centre, offering real-time visibility across 50+ cities, and enabling fleets to prevent incidents, intervene faster, and understand behaviour more deeply.
But India’s mobility story is changing. Safety cannot remain restricted to four-wheelers alone. And in India, Two-wheelers are the backbone of how India actually moves: fast, dense, and everywhere.
BYTES’ early work demonstrated a combination of vision-based Proprietary AI-Powered Safety System, real-time risk detection, edge optimisation, and an intuitive understanding of how riders behave on Indian roads. Their architecture, technology stack, and approach to reliability reflect Cautio’s belief that safety cannot be built as an afterthought; it must be engineered from first principles with patience, discipline, and long-term clarity.
Speaking on the announcement, Ankit Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, Cautio, said: “Every incident we see reminds us that safety in India cannot remain limited to three- and four-wheelers and commercial fleets. Two-wheelers are at the heart of Indian mobility, and they deserve the same attention, intelligence, and care that larger fleets receive today. BYTES shares this belief deeply. By bringing their team into Cautio, we are accelerating our mission to build an India-first safety infrastructure that protects everyone on the road, not just a select few.”
With this, the founders and team members of BYTES will join Cautio’s R&D team, where they will contribute to the development of a new generation of intelligence built specifically for the two-wheeler ecosystem. Cautio will be doubling down on its investment in this category – expanding research, dedicating long-term engineering resources, and committing capital towards solutions that make everyday riding safer for millions. This includes new work in rider visibility, real-time risk detection, incident documentation, and human-in-the-loop response systems tailored to the speed and vulnerability of two-wheeler movement in India.
“Our mission at BYTES has always been to make riding safer without adding friction. We’ve believed from day one that safety must be democratised across all segments, especially two-wheelers. This ecosystem needs to come together to truly move the needle on safety & as Cautio has already shown how video intelligence can reshape mobility safety in India, hence we’re excited to scale our work inside a platform that understands both the urgency and the responsibility of what we’re building. Together, we can reach millions of riders faster,” said Aayush & Prakhar, Co-founders, BYTES
The integration of Bytes marks a pivotal step toward a more inclusive, intelligent, and human-centred approach to mobility safety in India, one that recognises that safety is not a privilege; it is foundational infrastructure.
