Reliance Retail buys 54% stake in robotics firm Addverb Technologies

By siliconindia  |  Tuesday, 18 January 2022, 05:46:12 PM IST

Reliance Retail buys 54% stake in robotics firm Addverb Technologies
The retail unit of Reliance Industries, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, has picked up a 54% stake in robotics company Addverb Technologies for $132 million, a senior company official said. This round of funding, a mix of primary and secondary capital, will accelerate the company’s expansion in Europe and US and enable it to set up a large robotic manufacturing facility.
With this strategic partnership, the six-year-old company has raised $143 million in all till date. Addverb had previously raised $11 million in funding led by Jalaj Dani, co-promoter of Asian Paints.
“The company is valued at $270 million post this transaction,” Sangeet Kumar, cofounder and CEO, Addverb Technologies told ET. The cofounders together hold around 24-25% stake in the company after this deal. The remaining stake is held by the early backers including Dani of Asian Paints.
“Addverb also plans to start an innovation lab with bases in Europe, US and India to come up with solutions for complex problems in the field of Human-Robotic collaboration,” said Kumar.
Currently, the company is expecting to close the financial year with revenues over Rs 410-415 crore and expects it to grow to Rs 2,000 crore over the next 24 months. Kumar added that he expects the revenue to reach Rs 7,500 crore over the next five years.
With the new manufacturing facility in FY 2022-23, the company would have capacity to produce 50,000 robots in a year.
Founded in June 2016, by Kumar, Prateek Jain, Bir Singh, Satish Kumar Shukla and Amit Kumar, Addverb Technologies provides warehouse and factory automation products powered by robotics, AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and IoT.
It works with companies such as Reliance, Flipkart, HUL, Asian Paints, Coco-Cola among others as its clients.
The Noida-based company runs 100% subsidiaries in Singapore, Netherlands and Australia.
Addverb manufactures its own robots and develops the software to control these them, enabling the company to offer customisation and easy integration with the existing infrastructure and software systems of its clients.

ON THE DECK

siliconindia