Addverb to open 2nd robot factory in three months
2 min read 23 Nov 2022, 01:14 AM ISTThe new factory will generate over 3,000 jobs
PremiumNEW DELHI : Reliance Industries Ltd-backed robotics company Addverb Technologies will open its second manufacturing plant in the country in the next three months, co-founder Satish Shukla said.
The new factory will create more than 3,000 jobs, along with additional direct and indirect employment opportunities at project deployment sites, Shukla added. Both the facilities are located in Greater Noida.
The company makes fixed and flexible industrial robots . Fixed automated robots include automated storage and retrieval systems like pallet shuttles. Flexible robots include autonomous mobile robots and sorting robots where one can change the configuration anytime, and no fixed infrastructure is required as in the case of fixed robots.
“We are coming up with our second manufacturing facility in Greater Noida. It will be spread across 15 acres. We will manufacture shuttle and autonomous mobile categories of robots. Production at the new facility will start in the next three months," Shukla said.
He said the factory will be able to produce up to 60,000 robots annually but can be scaled up 6-8 times if needed. Addverb’s current factory in Greater Noida can produce up to 50,000 robots annually.
The company also plans to use the new unit to take some of the pressure off its current facility, which also serves as a software research, R&D and experience centre.
“The new facility will be dedicated to large-scale manufacturing, while the existing one will focus on specialized manufacturing," Shukla said.
In January, Reliance Industries bought a 54% stake in Addverb for $132 million. It also placed an order worth $1 billion with Addverb.
These will be supplied over a period of 4-5 years. Shukla also added that the company is seeing rapidly growing demand for robots, from 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 Southeast Asia, Australia, the US, and the Middle East," Shukla 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 ₹67 crore, which grew to around ₹130 crore in 2020 and around ₹330 crore in 2021.
"Exciting news! Mint is now on WhatsApp Channels 🚀 Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest financial insights!" Click here!
