Mitsubishi Electric is reportedly planning to invest almost $20 million into GreyOrange Robotics.
GreyOrange is a startup company developing robotics and automation systems for the logistics industry, particularly warehouse automation systems integrating robots, and has been growing fast, according to a story on EconomicTimes.com.
The investment would lead to a valuation for GreyOrange of an amount between $300 million and $500 million.
GreyOrange has built an autonomous mobile platform much like the Amazon Kiva – the robots developed Kiva Systems, and which are now owned by Amazon Robotics as a result of the acquisition of Kiva by the online retail giant.
Mitsubishi has not officially commented on the story, but the Economic Times says its story is based on “two sources familiar with the development”.
GreyOrange raised $30 million from Tiger Global and Blume Ventures in a funding round in 2015. The company is said to have revenues of almost $40 million.
GreyOrange has two main robots – Butler and Sorter. Butler is used for moving things and for storage, while Sorter is used for sorting.
Headquartered in Singapore, GreyOrange has a strong presence in India. But it also has offices in other parts of Asia, the Middle East and in Europe.
Clients are from various places around the world, most recently, Brazil, where an urban logistics company called Loggi installed GreyOrange’s “linear sortation system” in its São Paulo hub earlier this year.
GreyOrange says Loggi will be able to process 72,000 parcels a day using its system, and the companies are planning to open several last-mile delivery hubs in the Latin American region.
Samay Kohli, CEO, GreyOrange, says: “The Linear Sorter has been adopted by many leading ecommerce and logistics companies across India and APAC market.
“We are excited to have Loggi on board with us now.
“Having studied the challenges that Latin America faces, we are working to provide an intelligent automation solution that can be customised to reduce turnaround time to ensure fastest delivery to the customer.
“Companies in Latin America are not just looking for automation products, but technology solutions that will provide the required technical support to their clients.
“With GreyOrange’s unique combination of hardware and software expertise, we are looking at addressing the supply chain issues to improve the delivery process of the urban centres and remote locations without burdening the transportation system.”
Daniel Topper, vice president, e-commerce, Loggi, says: “Every day, Loggi offers an incredible express delivery experience, with real time tracking, to thousands of consumers buying on the main e-commerce websites in Brazil.
“We chose to partner with Grey Orange to accelerate our stellar growth – while maintaining our top-of-the-class SLA [service level agreement] level.
“Indeed, we were looking for a partner who would understand the specific requirements of our express delivery business and, in the meantime, offer a flexible platform that could fully integrate with our in-house routing algorithms and APIs.”
