Reliance Retail Invests $132 Million in Addverb Technologies

Reliance Retail Ventures, a unit of Reliance Industries, has acquired a 54% stake in Addverb Technologies for a consideration of $132 million. In addition, RIL will also acquire an additional 1.7% stake and take their total holding in Addverb Technologies to 55.7% via a stock deal. This is one more in a series of digital and green energy franchises that Reliance has been aggressively acquiring companies over the last few months.

However, this is not the first round of funding that Addverb Technologies has got. Earlier, it had raised $11 million from Jalaj Dani of Asian Paints. The current transaction with Reliance Industries is worth Rs.990 crore and values Addverb Technologies in the range of Rs.1,900 crore to Rs.2,000 crore overall. The company has plans to gradually scale up its valuation closer to $1 billion over the next few years and become a unicorn.

Addverb offers advanced robotic solutions and has been working closely with premier companies like Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever and Marico. Addverb was the company that had help design and implement the warehousing solution for JioMart which had eventually led to the stake purchase. The Addverb solution was used by Reliance Retail for its fully automated warehouses for JioMart.

For Addverb, this deal gives them access to a much larger balance sheet. With this partnership in place, Addverb Technologies will be able to effectively leverage the 5G battery technology, new energy initiatives, advances in material sciences and others in the development of more advanced and more affordable robots. Addverb is working towards substantial automation where robots almost take over most of the routine operations.

Addverb will use the funds from Reliance Retail to set up a second manufacturing facility in the Delhi-NCR region. It already has an existing facility at Noida for manufacture of fully automatable robots. Addverb will also look to expand its skill base quotient with these funds. It currently employs 550 engineers on its rolls and will scale it up to 2,000 engineers on its rolls in the next few months. This is likely to have a geometric output impact.

Addverb Technologies was founded in 2016 with the core start-up founders holding 25% stake in the company even after the RIL dilution. Addverb currently has operating subsidiaries located in the United States, Singapore, Australia and the Netherlands.