Created by Pavlo Pikulin in 2018, the Ukrainian startup Deus Robotics raised $5 million in the first round of funding. The transaction was arranged by BGV Trident Capital, founded by Ilya Ponomarev and Hennadii Butkevych. Deus Robotics develops modern robotic solutions. The investments will be used to organize mass production of robots for warehouse logistics, to expand the number of development engineers in Ukraine and to organize company’s entry into international markets.

Mass production is planned to begin by the end of 2022, with a volume of about 400 robots per month. These robots will be used to automate logistics processes.

Until now, Deus Robotics has been developed on basis of personal investments of its founders. Thus, Pavlo Pikulin has already invested more than $1 million of his own funds into the development of the project. In 2021, Deus Robotics produced and delivered 40 robots to customers.

“There is a number of tasks in any warehouse that are solved by people: sorting, picking orders and transporting goods. We develop robotic solutions specifically for these tasks. At this moment we have three robots: for sorting goods and parcels, for transporting racks and for transporting pallets. Next year, three new models of robots will appear, dealing with other tasks like picking up goods from shelves and racks,” said Pavlo Pikulin.

According to him, the robotics market is a promising area for investment. Deus Robotics’ portfolio already includes orders for the supply of more than 400 robots in 2022-2023.

“One of our robots can work approximately 18 hours a day. This exceeds the working day of a loader or a warehouse manager, whose working day lasts 8 hours. And one needs to add weekends, vacations, sick leave and other administrative costs associated with hiring people (training, transportation costs, etc.),” Pavlo Pikulin explained.

The development of robotics in Ukraine is advantaged by the partnership with the innovative company “Nova Poshta”. Deus Robotics’ robots are already being tested in the logistics processes of sorting and moving goods of the “Nova Poshta” company.

According to Pavlo, the tangible effect of the use of robots can also be seen in other areas like construction, in which the company plans to develop in the future as well. However, currently, the main focus of the company is logistics. In the world of rapid development of online trade, retail and postal services, logistics has the highest potential for robotization.

“Today we are focused on logistics robots. Their task is to increase the efficiency of the manual labor in logistics companies. But now they replace only a part of the human work. And our goal is to robotize all warehouse logistics processes,” commented Pavlo Pikulin.

“The creation of robots is one of the most promising areas for the development of high technologies. Replacing manual labor with the machine labor is an ancient dream of a mankind, and I am glad that the Ukrainian company is at the forefront of this process. We, as investors, will help this in every way we can, and will contribute to the global success of Deus Robotics,” said Ilya Ponomarev, Managing Partner at BGV Trident Capital.

Let us recall that the robotic company, engaged in the development, production and sale of high-tech equipment for logistics, Deus Robotics, was founded in 2018 in Kyiv. It specializes on the development and production of technologies for autonomous mobile robots (AMR).

Pavlo Pikulin, founder of Deus Robotics. Photo from the personal archive