Venture Catalysts backs industrial robotics startup Peppermint

Startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts on Wednesday said it has backed Aubotz Labs owned industrial robotics startup Peppermint.

Other investors who participated in the seed round include industry veteran Naveen Kshatriya and Australian financial services company ANZ, according to a statement. Venture Catalysts has not disclosed the financial details of the transaction. 

Peppermint will use the fresh capital to scale up its manufacturing efforts, increase after-sales support infrastructure and foray into new markets, the statement said.

Kshatriya is a former head of British Petroleum’s Castrol India and was part of the global leadership team at BP. He currently sits on the board of multiple businesses as an independent director, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Venture Catalyst has backed about 18 companies so far in 2020. In the first half of June, it disclosed investments in startups such as short video-based job search platform MyKaam, refreshment aggregator platform for office goers F5, and electronics retail platform GabbarDeals.

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Founded in 2019 by Runal Dahiwade, Nityanand Prabhutendolkar and Miraj Vora, Peppermint has built an industrial floor cleaning robot. The company claims the robot has the ability to kill the Covid-19 virus using chemicals and ultraviolet light.

The robot was launched in February and is designed to service everyday floor cleaning needs at public and industrial spaces such as airports, railways, factories, industries and hotels.

Incubated and headquartered at IIT Bombay, Peppermint has received Nidhi Prayas grant from the Indian government’s department of science and technology (DST).

Operational in Pune and Bengaluru, the company currently only offers robotic solutions for floor cleaning and sanitising, according to its website.

“With the onset of Covid-19 pandemic, the need for tech-enabled cleaning and hygiene solutions at workplaces is now higher than ever… Many countries have already deployed robots that can clean and large surfaces without requiring any human assistance, and India is also ruminating about the potential of cleaning robots in combating the pandemic,” Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, president and co-founder at Venture Catalysts said.