GreyOrange Robotics, a hardware startup with Indian connections, is said to be involved in talks Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi for a possible investment of up to $20 million. GreyOrange has its main offices in Singapore and a research center in India in Gurugram, near Delhi.
The company’s thrust area is warehouse automation using robotics and is already clocking in revenues. The startup’s major investor so far has been Tiger Global and the proposed investment from Mitsubishi is expected include Tiger Global also in the arrangement. Incidentally Mitsubishi is one of the customers of GreyOrange.
The investors in startups look for the valuation of the company and in the case of GreyOrange, it is likely that after the infusion of fresh capital, the company’s valuation can be anywhere between $300 million and $500 million. The route being adopted is issue of convertible notes. This is being done with the objective of taking care of the valuation issues. The convertible note is another form of short-term lending which can be converted into equity at a convenient time. This can also be done at the time of a future funding exercise and hope that the valuation also matches the expectations.
For the record, GreyOrange Robotics had received $30 million in the first round of investment through Tiger Global and Blume Ventures. Even in this round, Mitsubishi is said to have indicated that their exposure would be less than $20 million. The startup is hoping to raise a larger tranche of funding in 2018.
All these reports are, however, not confirmed by either GreyOrange or Mitsubishi, officially. They have declined to offer any comment. Besides Singapore and Gurgaon, the other offices of the company are located in Hong Kong, Japan, Dubai and even in Germany.
The reports also indicate that Robotics as a business segment has been quite successful in attracting investments, particularly, among the startups (over $2billion). Indian startups in the robotics domain are also joining the gravy train, possibly at a slower pace.