Robotics startup Hivebotics raises US$6 million in Series A round led by Vertex Ventures

[SINGAPORE] Singapore-based robotics startup Hivebotics has raised US$6 million in a Series A funding round, it said on Friday (Sep 4).

The round was led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with Fareast Land Development and bathroom-product manufacturer Rigel participating.

The capital is intended to take Hivebotics’ robot, Abluo, from pilot deployments into large-scale production.

Abluo has an articulated arm and can clean a commercial restroom including toilets, urinals, sinks and floors. Existing commercial cleaning robots focus on only the floor, noted the startup.

The funds will also be used to expand the distribution network across the company’s four core markets as well as develop its proprietary physical artificial intelligence layer that plans, monitors and validates each cleaning job.

Abluo has logged about 10,000 operating hours over 12 months across 20 sites in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. These sites include hospitals, airport terminals and shopping malls.

Get insights into businesses across South-east Asia

The robot provides consistent restroom cleaning, solving the staffing and consistency issues of cleaning toilets. It can clean restrooms to the same standard during each cycle, replacing about 30 minutes of manual work with a five-minute human inspection.

It cleans without contact, using a combination of high-pressure steam, targeted chemical jet, vacuum extraction and blow-drying to avoid cross-contamination risks. The arm can reach under rims and around fixtures.

AI generates the cleaning route in real time, with cameras identifying each fixture. Each job is scored by a before and after check, auditing the cleaning outcomes.

Rishab Patwari, co-founder and CEO of Hivebotics, said: “Within three years, teams of robots will do most of the repetitive, labour-intensive work of running a facility. We started with restrooms because they are the hardest: wet, cramped and full of moving parts.”

The startup is looking to tap a growing soft facilities management market which includes cleaning, security, catering and related services. The market is projected to increase from US$770 billion in 2024 to US$1.2 trillion in 2033, according to Grand View Research.

Restroom cleaning is the most labour-intensive part of the sector, and hardest to staff, with Kimberly-Clark reporting janitorial turnover of 200 to 400 per cent annually.

“Restroom cleaning is one of the few labour markets where demand is non-discretionary and supply keeps tightening,” noted Chan Yip Pang, executive director, investment, at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India.