Robotics company GreyOrange’s revenue rose 74% in FY17

Gurugram-based robotics company Grey Orange India Pvt. Ltd reported a rapid rise in revenue for the financial year ended 31 March 2017, but suffered heavier losses as costs increased at a faster pace.

Net sales for 2016-17 jumped 74% to Rs 75.8 crore from Rs 43.6 crore the previous year, according to VCCEdge, the data research arm of News Corp VCCircle. The company had posted revenue of about Rs 3.2 crore in 2014-15.

However, expenses surged 93% to Rs 110.5 crore from Rs 57.2 crore. This expanded the net loss to Rs 30.8 crore from Rs 11.9 crore. The company had spent a total of Rs 7.5 crore in 2014-15 and incurred a net loss of Rs 4.6 crore.

This is the latest data available from the company's filings with the Registrar of Companies. GreyOrange India's parent company is the Singapore-registered GreyOrange Pte. Ltd. So, the financials of the India unit is not a complete representation of the group.

GreyOrange was founded in 2009 by BITS Pilani alumni Samay Kohli (chief executive) and Akash Gupta (technology head). The duo had earlier built AcYut, an indigenously developed series of humanoid robots.

A warehousing automation company, GreyOrange develops products for materials handling. The company’s flagship product is the Butler System, a fleet of mobile robots that can manage order fulfilment inside a warehouse. The firm claims that this helps companies increase efficiency and reduce operational costs.

The team built the Butler System after noticing that most industrial automation products are rigid and take a long time to install and achieve their full capacity. GreyOrange’s system works via proprietary machine learning and swarm intelligence algorithms. The firm claims to be serving some of the largest companies in e-commerce, third-party logistics and retail.

GreyOrange did not respond to email queries at the time of publishing this report.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it developed a new artificial intelligence-driven robot that acts like a butler to automate the order-picking process in logistics centres and warehouses. The new robot is aimed at e-commerce and logistics companies.

The company last raised funds in August 2015, when it secured $30 million from existing investors Tiger Global Management and Blume Ventures. In 2014, it raised its Series A funding round from the same and other investors.