Grey Orange’s ‘Butlers’ to serve up Japanese market

It may be a case of carrying coal to Newcastle, but an Indian firm is gearing up to supply robots to Japan, a pioneer in robotics.

Gurgaon-based Grey Orange, floated by BITS Pilani alumni Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta, which sells robots designed for warehouses and courier players, has signed up with a Japanese e-commerce firm to supply robots called ‘Butlers’, which will be supplied by its Singapore arm.

The start-up, which was set up in 2014, also moved to Singapore last year to assemble ‘Butlers’ there to cater to the international market. ‘Butlers’, which were launched this year, are designed to fetch products from the racks and deliver these to human workforce in the supply chain.

Grey Orange, whose India customers include e-commerce players such as Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra and Snapdeal and courier companies, such as Aramex, Delhivery, DTDC and Gojavas, said robots for India are assembled domestically.

Grey Orange makes two types of robots — Butlers and Sorters — with life spans of five to eight years. Depending on capability, the cost of a ‘Butler’ ranges from $25,000 to $50,000.

The ‘Sorters’, which is an automated system for loading, scanning and bagging of packets based on their destination, can cost anything between $200,000 and $400,000.

“Costs are inclusive of the software, which is offered on a subscription model with free updates,” Kohli, the co-founder of Grey Orange, told BusinessLine .

Thanks to the e-commerce boom, the start-up has supplied more ‘Sorters’ in India, but the demand is higher for ‘Butlers’ in the foreign market, where the company’s customers include the $2.7-billion Kerry Logistics, a Hong Kong-listed firm, and a large postal company in Singapore.

Kohli said they also plan to tap mainland China, where Kerry Logistics has major operations.

With investments from venture capital firms Tiger Global and Blume Ventures, Grey Orange has also filed for seven patents in Singapore.

When asked if low labour costs in India discourage investments in robots, Kohli said though robots improve productivity, investing in such hardware and software comes easily in Singapore and Hong Kong. But the good news, says Kohli, is that Grey Orange is getting repeat orders in India even as it looks to crack the Japanese market.

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