On July 1, 2020, Pudu Robotics, an indoor delivery robot provider, officially announced the completion of B round financing of more than $15M with Meituan as the exclusive investor. Zhang Tao, CEO of Pudu Robotics, said the fund would be mainly used to develop products, expand sales, explore new usage scenarios and expand overseas market.
Pudu Robotics is a top-notch intelligent indoor delivery robot provider in China. The company focuses on the R&D, design and production of robots and offers a number of popular delivery robots, including PuduBot (food delivery robot), BellaBot (food delivery robot), HoloBot (building delivery robot), HolaBot (dish-return robot), and GazeBot (multi-scene delivery robot). Its first mass-produced robot PuduBot has been widely used in extensive scenarios, including restaurants, hotels, office buildings, hospitals, Internet cafes and Karaoke, with customers in 200+ cities in more than 20 countries. In 2019, Pudu Robotics maintained rapid business growth and remained the leading food delivery robot provider.
Pudu Robotics possesses the core technologies of low-speed automatic driving, robotics motor and motion control. Its R&D team has developed a number of proprietary technologies. Up to now, the company has applied for several hundreds of core patents, with key patents accounting for more than 60% of the total. Its food delivery robot PuduBot won the German Red Dot Award 2017″Best of the Best”, one of the world’s most prestigious awards in the design industry.
Meituan adheres to a corporate mission of “We help people eat better, live better.” The company focuses on local services including catering and provides a full range of services to businesses through supply-side digitization to accelerate the online transformation of the service industry. This round of investment in Pudu Robotics will allow both sides to combine their strengths in their respective fields and collaborate to promote the exploration of services to humans daily life and the delivery robot industry.
Pudu Robotics and Meituan also have future plans for cooperation and exchange in the field of robotics and catering service digitization.