Addverb's Bot Verse: Exploring The 'World's Largest' Mobile Robot Factory
Around 70–80% of Addverb's revenue comes from India currently, but this revenue mix will likely change in the next two years.
Robotics firm Addverb Technologies Ltd. has its eyes set on globalising its revenue mix, with a top-line target of Rs 500 crore for the current financial year.
NDTV Profit visited the Reliance Industries Ltd.-backed company's factory in Greater Noida, touted to be the largest mobile robot manufacturing facility in the world.
Addverb was founded in 2016 by former Asian Paints Ltd. executives Sangeet Kumar, Prateek Jain, Satish Shukla and Bir Singh. Chairperson Jalaj Dani is a co-promoter at the paintmaker. It set up its first factory named Bot Valley in 2021 in Noida and launched Bot Verse in Greater Noida in June this year.
"Bot Valley's capacity was completely utilised, so we came up with the plan to put another manufacturing facility," Shukla told NDTV Profit, while on a shop-floor visit. "It is spread across 15 acres and this is the world's largest mobile robot manufacturing facility."
The plant has a capacity to manufacture 1 lakh robots per year. At present, around 14 types of robots are manufactured at the facility, all of which provide warehouse automation solutions for businesses. Apart from backers GAIL (India) Ltd. and RIL, its clients include Hindustan Unilever Ltd., Flipkart, Amazon.com Inc., PepsiCo Inc., The Coca-Cola Co. and Marico Ltd.
Around 70–80% of Addverb's revenue comes from India currently, but this revenue mix is expected to change in the next two years, Shukla said. "We expect almost 60% of our revenue to come from outside India and 40% of our revenue to come from India."
Since 2016, Addverb's revenue has also scaled multifold. In the last fiscal, it posted a top-line of Rs 447 crore, but there was a loss of approximately Rs 58 crore. In FY22, it reported a revenue of Rs 317 crore and a profit of Rs 2.5 crore.
Shukla explained that the loss was due to the company's "aggressive" expansion into international markets. "We now have a team in Europe, (the) U.S., Australia and (the) Middle East as well. So, this was all about fuelling growth for the future," he said.
The co-founder said the next three months are typically very hectic as it is the busiest period in all probability.
Shukla expects the revenue to grow in the current fiscal to "somewhere around Rs 500 crore". "That's the kind of top-line growth we're targeting and, definitely, there are a lot of important and very critical project discussions, which we will close once the holiday season is over."
