RobotAppStore is a unique online marketplace for skillful robotics app developers where they can list their apps for sale. Recently this startup has declared that it has secured $250,000 from Grishin Robotics, a company that has a specific focus in making investments in the robotic industry.
With this funding, RobotAppStore welcomed its first ever investment from any external party. Despite getting these funds, the startup does not want to describe it as a seed round because Founder and CEO of RobotAppStore, Elad Inbar says they are still in talks with other investors.
The RobotAppStore is an effort to provide a platform to robot app developers, so this startup can boost this industry by following the footsteps of Apple, who launched its app store to entice customers to buy the iPhone while also displaying the versatility of the product. However, unlike the smartphone industry, robots represeng a completely different fixture because in spite of having lots of potential, imagination and vision, the number of domestic robots is quite low (around 30 million).
Moreover, smartphones are bound around two major operating systems; iOS and Android whereas robots do not have such platforms that can unite them under one roof in large numbers. Also, robots are made for different purposes such as weight watching, housekeeping and so on, which makes it even more difficult to gather them around dominant platforms.
These challenges do not seem to discourage Inbar, as he is fully aware of them and sees them as a positive. As he said during an interview, “If you look at the mobile world ten years ago, it was pretty much like the robotics world today. I feel the same trends are happening. If you wanted to develop a ringtone in the past, you had to do this for two Nokia platforms, Sony, Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and so on. That’s what the robotics world looks like today.”
On the other hand, the new investor of RobotAppStore, Grishin Robotics’s CEO Dmitry Grishin is also quite optimistic about their investment in this startup, as he said, “first we are interested in the team behind this company,” and secondly he believes that “the idea of a robot app store is a very unique proposal for the market. The more opportunities you create for using robots, the bigger the market will grow.”
The reason for being optimistic for these two is that RobotAppStore is following a classic plan of planting seeds. In this plan, the latest funding from Grishin Robotics will play a very significant role, as with these funds RobotAppStore will not only hire more staff, but they will also extend their reach by getting out to both app developers and robot manufacturers in order to develop an ecosystem. They will encourage robot makers to open their hardware with Application Programming Interface (API) and try to lure developers who make apps for smartphones by offering them 70 percent of the earnings from the apps just like the app stores for smartphone. In addition to this, they will also look to establish a Robot Operating System to further push the robotics industry.
Only the time will tell how successful this venture will remain, but according to the estimate of ABI research, the robotics industry definitely has potential. This can be judged from the ABI’s report, which depicts that this industry will post a profit of $18 billion in 2015.
Source: TechCrunch
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