Propelling Productivity in Logistics: Investing in Unbox Robotics.
Growth of e-commerce is fuelling a parcel volume boom across the world. 3PL, logistics companies have rapidly expanded their network and are now are looking at cost efficiencies and productivity solutions across it. Arali Ventures is investing in Unbox Robotics, a dynamic team bringing unique, cutting-edge solutions to this space.
Growing e-commerce industry leads to huge increase in parcel volumes globally.
Fuelled by the e-commerce boom, global parcel (package) volumes are expected to grow from 100 billion/year in 2020 to more than 200 billion/year in just five years.
The Asia-Pacific region accounts for 41% of the global parcel volume. India, China, the Middle East, and South-East Asia are the markets that are propelling this boom.
India alone shipped 2.5 billion parcels from 2018–2019!
What’s more, all logistics players have extended their reach significantly over the last 4–5 years, the larger ones service almost 85–90% of 19000 odd pin codes in the country. As a result, there is a high growth of distribution centres (30–50%), either regional or local across the country.
This situation is similar in countries across the developing world, while in the developed world, there is a clear focus on bringing the distribution/sort centre as close to the customer as possible
Traditional technology for distribution and sorting centres is from a different era and do not address the challenges of today.
Automation solutions, typically, have been designed for large distribution centres. They tend to have significant disadvantages when it comes to regional and local hubs.
These solutions are characterised by —
- Larger Upfront Capex Investments
- Long Installation Times — up to 6 months
- Positive ROI — but only at scale for smaller operations and minimal floor space
These solutions therefore are highly inflexible. They do not address the automation challenges at the regional and local sort centre level.
The 3PL and e-commerce industry is looking for a flexible and easily implementable solution to deliver productivity and efficiencies to its ever-expanding network.
Unbox Robotics offers space-efficient robotics and automation that make warehousing spaces smaller. This allows for operations closer to customers for faster delivery times.
We invested in Unbox Robotics because of its —
1. Strong Founding Team with domain experience in logistics automation and robotics.
When we met with Pramod Ghadge CEO and Shahid Memon CTO, we knew we found a winning combination for success in this niche.
At Flipkart, Pramod led several parcel sorting projects including the launch of India’s first robot-based sorting solution. His logistics and manufacturing experience prior includes several Industry 4.0 technologies across Israel, Singapore, and India. He holds a Masters in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the National University of Singapore.
Apart from his technical expertise, Shahid also has entrepreneurial experience as the CTO of his previous startup. He spent over six years building multi-robot intelligence/ SWARM robots and holds an international patent. He graduated with a Masters in Autonomous Robotics Engineering from the University of York.
2. Innovative AI-powered Autonomous Robot Sorting System.
Through SWARM intelligence-powered Autonomous robots and their proprietary bagging technology, the solution expects to save warehouse real estate by 50% and increase productivity 2X from the market average. The deployment is expected to be significantly faster, a mere 2 weeks versus the prior 6 months.
By lowering costs while increasing productivity, Unbox Robotics holds the promise of a positive ROI for their customers in a very short period of time.
3. Market Demand and Traction.
Within just a few months, Unbox Robotics has already begun pilots with some of India’s largest e-commerce and logistics companies and abroad. They are also seeing significant interest in partnerships from operators in developed economies.
We realise that these flexible automation solutions are very relevant to developed economies as well, where the value proposition tends to be focused on moving the distribution, sorting centres as close to the customer as possible and improve customer experience
We expect Unbox Robotics to scale significantly and deliver greater efficiencies across the logistics space in India and worldwide.
What Unbox Robotics has to say
“We are excited to join the journey with Arali Ventures. They have rich experience building, investing, and nurturing enterprise-tech and deep-tech companies.
Their founder-friendly approach is of massive value to Unbox Robotics as we scale our business.”
— Pramod Ghadge & Shahid Memon, Unbox Robotics.
Arali Ventures is a pre-seed, seed-stage VC from India, investing in entrepreneurs building enterprise-tech solutions for the world. We help shape their journeys through product-market-fit and beyond and scale the offerings to greater heights.
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