Andrei Danescu, CEO and co-founder of Dexory, discusses his growth aims for the company and how they plan to spend the money.
Tell us about the Series B funding round that Dexory has closed. How much has been raised and who has invested?
We have raised $80m in Series B funding. The round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic and several angels from the logistics industry.
How much has Dexory grown since it launched its autonomous warehouse robots and software platform 18 months ago?
We have experienced exponential growth since introducing the solution to the market 18 months ago. To think that at that time we were less than 100 employees in the company and we have grown to a company of over 150 full time employees.
Not only have we grown from a people point of view, but we have expanded to new markets. Earlier this year we announced our expansion to the North American market, and just in September we announced that we are opening our new North American headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.
We have also expanded our customer base significantly since introducing the technology to the market. In the US we have on-boarded many new US based customers such as GXO, GE Appliances, JAMCO Group and Nidec while also expanding our European and Middle East footprint across DB Schenker, ID Logistics, Unipart, Maersk, Yusen Logistics, and many others. Sector wise, we now cover a variety of businesses with a logistics arm – from the usual contract logistics customers to eCommerce players, traditional retailers, manufacturers and cargo handlers showing the scalability of our product and model across all warehouse types.
Can you tell us a bit more about the current investment landscape and what it looks like?
What are the opportunities and challenges and why there is such an interest in deep technology firms at the moment?
When it comes to full stack, deep tech companies, we found that investors who really understand this space care about three things: defensibility, time to value and market potential.
As a full-stack technology company we demonstrated defensibility. Our tech stack (software, autonomy, robotics engineering etc.) is completely proprietary, giving us the opportunity to create the best technology for this industry. We’ve also proven the ability to own the entire value-chain from design, to production, customer deployment and after sales support.
The commercial traction has greatly reduced the risk profile from a business perspective. We have a wide range of customers converting at record speed, driving both a strong top-line growth and healthy unit economics.
This traction is in line with a huge appetite of the sector to embrace automation and AI as concepts have turned into reliable products with incredible value at scale. Being a fast to deploy, quick to get value solution makes us the obvious choice for both those starting their automation journey as well as those adding to their current stack.
This fuels both our ambition, and investors’ ambition to partner with us – as we are just scratching the surface of true supply-chain automation. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we have incredibly supportive investors, all aligned behind our mission.
How much do you think the global logistics automation market will grow over the next few years?
Some market research companies expect that the market size will reach between $217bn and $220bn by 2033. This growth is largely fueled by advancements in automation technologies, including robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning. These technologies will enhance productivity, reduce costs and improve workplace safety in sectors like eCommerce, manufacturing, and transportation logistics.
Key drivers for this growth include the rise of eCommerce, the increasing complexity of global supply chains and the demand for faster and more reliable deliveries. While ‘traditional’ robotics companies have seen growth, what the industry will be looking into next is how they can orchestrate these automations and extract even more value from the data that is generated across the supply chain on a daily basis.
Why do you think that the robotics and automation sector is an industry investors need to be taking seriously?
I think it is because of the growth potential of the market. When we look at the warehousing industry, it is one of the oldest industries on the planet. As a species we have been moving and storing goods around the world. As such it is an industry that has – over time – developed processes and ways of working that it has by and large stuck to for decades.
Where many enterprises have gone through different digital transformation projects, the warehousing industry has tended to lag behind. However, due to the pandemic and the shift in consumer behaviours, many companies are having to re-evaluate how they optimise their warehouse performance and how they are able to ensure that the right goods go out to the right customers at the right time and mitigate any costly errors in the process.
How will Dexory’s solutions capitalise on the market trends?
Our mission has always been to provide a true digital twin of warehouses. Over the next 12 months, DexoryView will evolve into a must have platform to orchestrate and optimise warehouses. Combining the sheer volume of proprietary data we collect with AI technology and with a deeper understanding of our customers, we are able to tap into new functionality that supercharges their existing performance – so they can serve their own customers better, faster and yet at a lower cost.
To support this, our data collection technology – our robots – will be able to capture an even broader range of information from warehouses (equipped with enhanced perception capabilities) seamlessly navigating busy sites at all times. This will be fed into our AI pipeline to extract even more insights about the goods, racking, space, movements and mathematically orchestrate the use of all resources. Overlaying these onto our highly interactive and intuitive cloud platform will allow our customers to find and test opportunities that bring even more tangible revenue uplift – not just at a warehouse level but across their supply chain.
Do you have examples of how Dexory’s platform has made an impact in distribution companies?
By providing 360-degree visibility into warehouse operations, DexoryView enhances inventory management and operational decision making. The platform’s capability to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces allows for optimised performance and future scenario simulations. Organisations such as DB Schenker have been able to increase their inventory accuracy by 6% and maintain it daily, whereas businesses like ID Logistics have been able to reduce manual inventory investigations by 41% in just two months to free up valuable time for other critical tasks.