Bengaluru-based logistics automation company, Unbox Robotics raised $1.2 million in a pre-Series A round led by BEENEXT, Karthik Bhat (via his AngelList India syndicate), Info Edge (India) Ltd-backed Redstart Labs (India) Ltd, and WEH Ventures.

Existing investors Arali Ventures, SOSV and HAX, and Entrepreneur First, as well as angel investors, took part in the round. This funding will be used to scale early client pilots, expand the team, and develop the product.

Founded in 2019, Unbox Robotics is developing software-defined robotics systems to help logistics companies automate and expand their operations on-demand while maintaining a small footprint and budget.

The 1st product is the World's 1st of its kind patent-pending AI-powered parcel sorting robotic system that gets installed at least 10X faster, saves 70% - 80% area, and improves productivity by more than 4X.

“With a massive surge in e-commerce, in the next three to five years, the logistics industry needs to handle about 2X the load they process today. Having seen these problems first hand, we decided to build a plug and play swarm robotics system that can improve the package sorting productivity while saving the area by 50-70 percent compared to existing sorting systems,” says Pramod Ghadge, CEO, Unbox Robotics.

“Currently, we are closely working with six e-commerce and logistics enterprises in India, Southeast Asia, and the US to deploy our solution in the next 12 months, and earn seven-figure revenue figures,” Pramod added.
The approach to warehouse management has shifted significantly in the last year, with retail and logistics companies increasingly looking to go the contactless road, fueled by the pandemic. Unbox claims it wants to solve the dynamic problems that retail and logistics companies face when it comes to warehouse management in a long-term way.

“Globally, e-commerce has seen rapid growth, but the logistics infrastructure empowering better customer experience has struggled to keep up. Unbox enables quick deployment, high throughput, and inherent flexibility for the rapidly evolving logistics market,” said Duncan Turner, Managing Director, HAX, General Partner, SOSV.

Unbox Systems claims to be able to deploy within a week, as opposed to other solutions that can take up to four months or more. The product's USP is its ability to minimize warehouse space by 50-70 percent while also rising employee efficiency by 3x and lowering capex by 40%.