GreyOrange raises $140M to develop fully-automated robotics for warehouses

GreyOrange, a Singapore-headquartered firm that develops robots for warehouses, has pulled in a $140 million Series C funding round as it targets more expansion and growth.

The company was started in 2011. Today it has five regional offices across the world — covering India, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. — three R&D centers and more than 60 ‘installations’ of its tech with retail customers worldwide. Right now, GreyOrange’s two main products are a robot ‘butler’ that moves heavy shelves and installations around warehouses and a robotic ‘sorter’ belt that organizes packages, but the vision is to build something more holistic.

“In three to four years we want to be the first in the world to achieve the goal of operating a fully-autonomous warehouse,” founders Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta told TechCrunch in an interview.

That’s a huge goal, and it puts the company in competition with established firms like Amazon-owned Kiva among others.

This new injection of funding is aimed at setting the trajectory to reach the startup’s lofty target. The round was led by Mithril Capital, a firm created by U.S. investor Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan, with participation from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and existing backers that include Blume Ventures.

The capital takes GreyOrange to $170 million raised from investors that include Mitsubishi and Flipkart.

“Warehousing is completely under-serviced and nothing has really changed,” Kohli and Gupta said. “The stuff you can do now is really just the tip of the iceberg. We’re trying to strengthen our backbone, so the majority of this investment will go into our own supply chain as we really try to take it 5-10X over the next couple of years.”

GreyOrange recently forayed into North America with the opening of a headquarters in Atlanta and plans to launch a research center in Boston. The company is also looking to develop its business in the country, too. It said in a press statement that it is aiming to deploy over 20,000 robots in the next three years.

from www.tech-life.in