UnboxRobotics Labs Pvt. Ltd, which operates a startup focussed on automated flexible parcel sorting solutions for logistics providers, has raised $500,000 (approximately Rs 3.71 crore at current exchange rates) in seed funding.
The round has been led by the Bengaluru-based Arali Ventures and CIIE.CO, the technology incubator of the Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad, UnboxRobotics said in a statement.
Others that participated in the round include existing backers such as Entrepreneur First and global venture capital firm SOSV. Angel investors Vijay Kedia and Rajesh Sawhney also took part in the funding round, the Bengaluru-based.
Pramod Ghadge, co-founder and chief executive officer at UnboxRobotics, said the firm was looking to remove inefficiencies in existing parcel sorting structures such as space utilisation, installation times and the amount of capital expenditure on current systems.
“We have onboarded some of the leading logistics and e-commerce players to deploy our solution and several customers from multiple countries are in the pipeline,” Ghadge said
Bengaluru-based UnboxRobotics was founded by Ghadge and Shahid Memon in 2019. The company says its platform can power a fleet of robots that can sort, add and remove packages. The platform can also enable these robots to sort parcels by destinations.
Separately, Arali Ventures co-founder and partner Arun Raghavan said the firm was confident in its investment in UnboxRobotics because of its management team’s experience and its focus on enhancing productivity and cost eliminations.
Prior to UnboxRobotics, Ghadge worked at Flipkart, where he helped introduce the e-commerce major’s robot-based parcel sorting system. Memon, meanwhile, has experience in artificial intelligence and multi-robot systems spaces.
Deals in the robotics segment
In January, Invento Robotics raised Rs 2 crore (around $281,000) in a seed funding round led by early-stage ITI Growth Opportunities Venture Fund of Investment Trust of India. Others that took part in that round included Pune-based Windrose Capital, angel investors Kevin Saboo and Vikash Sharma of IC1101 Inc.
Also that month, Skilancer Solar Pvt. Ltd, a startup that provides robotic cleaning systems for solar panels of commercial parks and establishments, raised an undisclosed sum from incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts.
In August last year, Miko, a robotics startup that focuses on creating emotive products, raised $7.5 million (around Rs 53.29 crore) in its Series A funding round from a clutch of investors including existing investor Chiratae Ventures. Previously, it raised $2 million (Rs 13 crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Chiratae and YourNest.
