New York-based Ottonomy closes seed funding round of $3.3 million from Pi Ventures. Addverb Technologies founder Sangeet Kumar also joined this round of funding. In total, the robotic startup has raised $4.9 million to support the scale of Ottobots for fully autonomous airport, retail and restaurant deliveries.
“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,” says Roopan Aulakh, Managing Director from 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 commercialized.”
Ottonomy’s robots Ottobots became the world’s first autonomous robots to deliver food, beverage and travel retail items at airports. The new Ottobots 2.0 have several added features and 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,” says Co-founder and CEO, Ritukar Vijay. “Introducing Ottobot 2.0, we are bringing best in class maneuverability, accessibility and modularity to our fully autonomous robots; which sets us ahead of our competition.”
Post realising a successful partnership at Cincinnati International Airport, and positive feedback from customers, Ottonomy has started partnerships with multiple airports across the US and Europe. In addition to expanding its curbside and last mile delivery technology advances, the company is involved with top Fortune 500 corporations in the retail and restaurants industry across North America for wide adoption.
The award-winning robotics company 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 and increasing its footprint across North America, Europe and the Middle East.
