Ottonomy.IO, a company that develops navigation robots to automate online delivery, has secured seed funding of $3.3 million, bringing its total funding to date to $4.9 million. The funding round was led by pi Ventures, Connetic Ventures and Branded Hospitality Ventures along with Sangeet Kumar, Founder & CEO of Addverb Technologies, who also joined this round.

Roopan Aulakh, Managing Director, pi Ventures said, "Last mile delivery is the least productive, yet the most expensive part of the delivery chain. There is a strong need for automation, which Ottonomy fulfils with Ottobots. Ottobots are equipped with a sophisticated tech stack both at the hardware and AI level. The founding team here brings years of multi-functional robotics experience, reflected in the world-class product that they have built and commercialized. ​​We are very excited to make our first investment in robotics and couldn’t have asked for a better team to partner with. ”

The New York-based tech startup will utilise the capital to scale production and build capacity to address the current pipeline of customers, expand its team size with more hiring and expand its presence across North America, Europe and the Middle East. 

Ottonomy.IO was founded in 2020 by Ritukar Vijay, Pradyot Korupolu, Ashish Gupta and Hardik Sharma. It is one of the first robotics companies to develop robots that can navigate completely autonomously in both indoor and outdoor environments, without human assistance. These robots fuse data from 3D Lidar and cameras and use AI to have an understanding of the external world.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the robots were being tested in limited numbers across the world. However, the pandemic-driven growing preference for online delivery, the rising labour shortages and emerging business models have accelerated their deployment. 

Using their High Information mapping of the serviceable delivery areas, the robots autonomously navigate to reach the consumer delivery locations. Once the delivery robot arrives at the doorstep, the customers use the unique QR code sent to them to unlock the holding area and retrieve their order. The robots can be remotely monitored and controlled whenever there is human intervention needed.

Co-founder and CEO, Ritukar Vijay said, “The team and I have been deeply vested in autonomous driving for more than a decade. We believe fully autonomous delivery robots are not only a precursor to autonomous vehicle proliferation but are solving today’s biggest challenges like - the labour shortage; enabling staff to do more with less. Introducing 2.0, we are bringing best in class manoeuvrability, accessibility and modularity to our fully autonomous robots; which sets us ahead of our competition.”

Earlier this year, Ottonomy’s robots “Ottobots” became the world's first autonomous robots to deliver food, beverage and travel retail items at airports. Ottobot 2.0 evolved from early pilots to include fully customizable modular cabins, increased access for customers and directional mobility, including crab mode.