Pune-based supply chain robotics technology firm Unbox Robotics successfully raises $7 million in Series A round of funding led by 3one4 Capital. Sixth Sense Ventures and Redstart Labs (Info Edge) also participated in the round. Unbox’s founders Pramod Ghadge, Shahid Memon and Rohit Pitale too contributed alongside its existing investors SOSV, Arali Ventures, WEH Ventures, BEENEXT, Force Ventures, Dr Vijay Kedia from Kedia Securities, Aditya Singh from Stride Ventures and Pavitar Singh from Sprinklr.
Rahul Chaudhary from Treebo Hotels, Nikhil Vora and Kathan Shah from Sixth Sense Ventures and Veda VC too invested in this round.
Unbox will use this funds to expand the team across functions, address customer demands globally, R&D and expand to new geographies.
Some of the largest e-commerce and logistics enterprises have already become the early adopters of Unbox’s products through trials/pilots. Unbox has also filed IP for its technology in India, the US and the EU.
The 2019-founded company specializes in robotics-based fulfilment and distribution technology for small to large e-commerce, retail and logistics enterprises. It’s high-speed robotics solutions consolidate customers’ orders in fulfilment centers and even sort them as per final delivery locations in distribution centers or delivery hubs.
Pramod Ghadge, CEO and co-founder of Unbox Robotics, said, “We are obsessed with improving the ways packages are handled, distributed, and delivered to end customers. We believe that there’s a massive potential for building and deploying robotics tech to deliver more packages using smaller footprints at lower operational costs as we see more adoption of e-commerce and Q-commerce (quick commerce) across the globe.”
He further added, “Since we launched our beta pilots with leading third-party logistics and e-commerce players in April 2021, we have already got orders from some of the leading e-commerce logistics companies. We are on our way to converting every other pilot or demo into a commercial contract. We will deploy the funds to build an A+ team to help our customers experience the future of logistics, sorting and supply chain across continents.”
“Unbox Robotics takes a novel approach in technology development to crack some of the most critical concerns in customers’ supply chains. We are excited to build a diverse team and further develop outstanding robotics technology for the future of global supply chains,” added Shahid Memon, CTO and co-founder of Unbox Robotics.
Speaking on the investment, Anurag Ramdasan, Partner, 3one4 Capital, said, “Globally supply chain and logistics have been reshaped with the growth in e-commerce and D2C over the last decade. Every layer of the stack today requires incredible optimisation and automation today to service the growing demand. Unbox Robotics is doing amazing work in identifying and solving these high-value problems and the team built by Pramod, Shahid and Rohit bring deep domain expertise to tackle this problem at scale. We are highly excited to start this journey with them as they streamline logistics and redefine the space.”
Nikhil Vora, Founder and CEO of Sixth Sense Ventures, commented, “We believe the e-commerce and D2C boom is creating a large need for automation solutions within warehouses and FCs, with the industry slated to grow to $32 billion over the next 2-3 years. This coupled with evolving consumer expectations, labour shortage, omnichannel distribution, and technology accessibility has made robotics a priority for both e-commerce and fulfilment companies. Unbox’s compact, vertical, and modular system is well suited for current market needs. Excited to partner with Pramod and Shahid, who bring deep and relevant industry experience as we scale the company together.”
