RIL-backed Addverb launches second robot mfg unit in Noida

Reliance-backed robotics company Addverb Technologies will start production at its second manufacturing facility in Greater Noida in the next three months, a top company executive told Mint. The new facility will generate over 3,000 jobs along with additional direct and indirect employment opportunities at project deployment sites, he added.

The company makes fixed and flexible industrial robots, which are used for automated storage and retrieval systems in factories etc. Fixed automated robots included automated storage and retrieval systems like pallet shuttle. Flexible robots include autonomous mobile robots and sorting robots where one can change the configuration anytime and no fixed infrastructure is required as in case of fixed robots.

“We are coming up with our second manufacturing facility in Greater Noida. It will be spread across a 15-acre campus. We will manufacture shuttle and autonomous mobile categories of robots. Production at the new facility will start in the next 3 months,” said Satish Shukla, co-founder of Addverb Technologies.

According to Shukla, the new facility has a capacity to produce 60,000 robots per year, but can be scaled up 6-8 times if needed. The company’s first manufacturing unit, which is also in Greater Noida, can produce 50,000 robots annually. It will also use the new unit to take some of the burden off its current center, which also serves as a software research, R&D and experience centre.

“The new facility will be entirely dedicated to large-scale manufacturing, while the existing facility will focus on specialized manufacturing,” said Shukla.

In January, Reliance Industries acquired a 54% stake in Addverb for $132 million. It also placed a large order with Addverb, worth $1 billion. These will be supplied over a period of 4-5 years. Shukla added that the company is seeing rapidly growing demand for robots by e-commerce, logistics, and FMCG companies in India as well as global markets.

“When we had raised funds from Reliance, we had planned to use it to build a new factory and expand to new markets. We have also opened offices in Europe and the US after the investment,” he said. “Demand for robots has grown in India. We are also seeing a big demand for robots, especially in South-East Asia, Australia, the US, and the Middle East. We are seeing demand for material handling robots,” he added.

The growing demand for robots in India is largely driven by the pandemic-led shift in consumer habits such as online grocery shopping. Also, many e-commerce companies have started catering to buyers in smaller cities and rural areas.

Shukla pointed out that in the last 2-3 years, the landscape for mobile robotics has changed in India. “We are seeing very fast adoption of automation for material handling operations.

The kind of volumes e-commerce companies in India are operating at is unheard of even in markets like the US,” he said.

Even FMCG companies such as Marico, Dabur, Unilever, and Patanjali are adopting robots in their operations, according to him.

The growing demand for robots also helped Addverb Technologies’ growing revenue. Shukla noted that till 2019, the company’s annual revenue was around Rs 67 crore, which grew to around Rs 130 crore in 2020 and around Rs 330 crore in 2021.