Ayush Bansal
Image: Mint
Reliance Industries (RIL) shares were trading almost a percent higher in early trade on Wednesday as investors cheered positive developments including Jio’s prepayment of all deferred liabilities and growth in its subscriber base.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. is buying an Indian robotics startup as the conglomerate scales up automation across its businesses, from e-commerce to new energy. Reliance paid $132 million for a majority stake in Addverb Technologies Pvt, which uses robots to make e-commerce warehouses and energy production more efficient, Sangeet Kumar, the startup’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Addverb Technologies co-founder and CEO Sangeet Kumar told PTI that the company will continue to operate independently and will use the funds received from Reliance to expand business overseas as well as set up one of the biggest robotic manufacturing facilities in Noida.
“The company is valued at $270 million posts this transaction,” Sangeet Kumar, co-founder, and CEO, Addverb Technologies told ET. The cofounders together hold around 24-25% stake in the company after this deal. The remaining stake is held by the early backers including Dani of Asian Paints.
“In the next 5-6 years, we want to be a billion-dollar company in revenue. We do everything in India- design, manufacture and deliver across the world,” Kumar said.
Currently, the company is expecting to close the financial year with revenues over Rs 410-415 crore and expects it to grow to Rs 2,000 crore over the next 24 months. Kumar added that he expects the revenue to reach Rs 7,500 crore over the next five years.
A few of Reliance’s recent acquisitions and investments include:
In November 2021, it acquired a 100 % stake in the retail lingerie businesses under the ‘Amante’ umbrella brand from MAS Brands— a wholly-owned subsidiary of MAS Holdings, Sri Lanka.
In September last year, it took significant control of Just Dial Limited by acquiring a 40.98% stake in the company.
During the July-September quarter of 2021, Reliance Industries’ subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd acquired Milkbasket. Milkbasket is a subscription-based daily micro-delivery service, supplying fresh foods and daily needs to consumers. Milkbasket was just another startup in Mukesh Ambani-led RIL’s shopping cart aimed at building its eCommerce empire.
Other recent tech-based startups acquisitions by RIL include pharmacy startup Netmeds, online furniture startup Urban Ladder and Zivame among others.
About the Company
Five-year-old Addverb, based in the Noida suburb of New Delhi, designs and makes software and installs robotic systems. That makes it one of a limited number of companies in the world to work in every aspect of robotics, from hardware and software to deployment.
Founded in June 2016, by Kumar, Prateek Jain, Bir Singh, Satish Kumar Shukla, and Amit Kumar. Addverb Technologies provides warehouse and factory automation products powered by robotics, AI, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and IoT.
Kumar is a graduate of the vaunted engineering school Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He worked with the country’s leading paint maker Asian Paints Ltd. setting up massive factories, using imported robots. Before founding his startup with four co-workers. Addverb now employs 550 engineers.
The company already has a manufacturing plant in Noida where it produces around 10,000 robots per annum.