Indoor delivery robot provider Pudu Robotics raises more than $15m to help drive business growth

Indoor delivery robot provider, Pudu Robotics, announced today they’ve successfully raised more than $15m in a Series B funding round with Meituan as the exclusive investor.

Zhang Tao, CEO of Pudu Robotics, explained that the fresh funding would be primarily used to expand their product suite, increase their customer list, explore new usage scenarios, and expand into overseas markets.

Shenzen-based indoor delivery robot provider Pudu Robotics offers a suite of indoor delivery robots that can be used in commercial and social situations such as hotels, office buildings, hospitals, restaurants, and cafes.

The company was founded in 2016 and now the indoor delivery robot provider claims to have customers in more than 200 cities across 20 different countries with a team of more than 100 people to support their operations.

The company has an impressive roster list which includes more than 2,000 international companies that include the likes of Wowa Brothers, the largest food delivery app operator in Korea; Sheraton, international hotel chain; Haidilao, a large Chinese hot pot maker and distributor; and JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce giant.

Pudu Robotics don’t shy away from explaining they are aggressive on research and development of their products and solutions with their R&D staff accounting for more than 50% of their workforce who develop and apply proprietary technologies to their robot range.

Pudu Robotics claims to have applied for several hundred core patents, with key patents accounting for more than 60% of the total patents that the indoor delivery robot provider has applied for.

Robots are becoming increasingly popular due to their constantly increasing capabilities to do tasks effectively and accurately for a lower price than having a human do the task.

Only recently Wandelbots raised $30m for their no-code robotics technology and autonomous robot provider OTTO Motors raised $29m showing the demand for robotic capabilities.

The indoor delivery robot provider has a range of robotic products which include the food delivering robots called PuduBot and BellaBot, a building delivery robot called HoloBot, a dish return robot called HolaBot, and a multi-scene robot called GazeBot.

In 2017, their indoor food delivery robot PuduBot won the German Red Dot Award which is an award for the design of the robot and more recently gained national media coverage in China due to their efforts towards helping the ‘anti-pandemic war’ in over 100 hospitals in China.

Their Pudubot has proved to be particularly useful as it’s equipped with multi-sensor and positioning and navigation technology and a large-capacity tray enabling the robot to deliver medicines, meals, and other supplies to patients in the hospital to free up healthcare workers time.

Using this situation as a case study, Pudu Robotics explain how the data shows that the number of meals that are delivered by the robot per day exceed 300 and up to 400 in peak.

When compared to a human waiter that delivers on average 200 meals per day, it gives the robot a human replacement rate on average between 150-200% with a payback period of roughly less than one year which highlights their potential cost-effectiveness.

This is the third funding round Pudu Robotics has done since launching the company and the company states they have future plans for cooperation and exchange in the field of robotics for the catering services.