Posted by New Delhi: Deep tech startup Ottonomy.IO has raised seed funding of $3.3 million, bringing its total funding to date to $4.9 million. pi Ventures led the seed funding round with the participation of Connetic Ventures and Branded Hospitality Ventures and Sangeet Kumar, Founder and CEO of Addverb Technologies.
Ottonomy.IO will use the raised funding to scale production and build capacity to address the current pipeline of customers, expand its team size and further strengthen its presence across North America, Europe and the Middle East.
With a significant uptick in demand and regulations becoming standardized across the US, Ottonomy expects the need for robot deliveries to grow exponentially.
Ritukar Vijay, Pradyot Korupolu, Ashish Gupta and Hardik Sharma founded the deep tech startup Ottonomy.IO in late 2020 to develop robots that can navigate completely autonomously in both indoor and outdoor environments, without human assistance. These robots fuse data from 3D Lidar and cameras and use AI to have an understanding of the external world.
Using their high information mapping of the serviceable delivery areas, the robots autonomously navigate to reach the consumer delivery locations. Once the delivery robot arrives at the doorstep, the customers use the unique QR code sent to them to unlock the holding area and retrieve their order. The robots can be remotely monitored and controlled in case there’s no human intervention.
“Last mile delivery is the least productive, yet the most expensive part of the delivery chain. There is a strong need for automation, which Ottonomy fulfills with Ottobots,” said Roopan Aulakh, MD of pi Ventures.
“Ottobots are equipped with a sophisticated tech stack both at hardware and AI level. The founding team here brings years of multi-functional robotics experience, reflecting in the world class product that they have built and commercialised. We are very excited to make our first investment in robotics and couldn’t have asked for a better team to partner with,” added Aulakh.
Earlier this year, Ottonomy’s robots “Ottobots” became the world’s first autonomous robots to deliver food, beverage and travel retail items at airports. Ottobot 2.0 evolved from early pilots to include fully customizable modular cabins, increased access for customers and directional mobility, including crab mode.
“The team and I have been deeply vested into autonomous driving for more than a decade. We believe fully autonomous delivery robots are not only a precursor to autonomous vehicle proliferation but are solving today’s biggest challenges like – the labor shortage; enabling staff to do more with less,” said Co-founder and CEO, Ritukar Vijay.
“Introducing 2.0, we are bringing best in class maneuverability, accessibility and modularity to our fully autonomous robots; which sets us ahead of our competition,” added Vijay.
With strong customer validation and positive response from customers at Cincinnati International Airport (CVG), the startup has formed partnerships with multiple airports across the US and Europe.
In addition to expanding its curbside and last-mile delivery technology advances, the startup is involved with top Fortune 500 corporations in the retail and restaurant industry across North America for wide adoption. The award-winning robotics startup has successfully completed pilots at the Newlab 5G Studio in New York using Verizon’s 5G networks, making a huge leap in capability to deploy large fleets.