Grace Brown, founder of Andromeda Robotics. Source: Andromeda Robotics.
Melbourne startup Andromeda Robotics is just two years old and four times shy of breaking even. The company, which has raised $1 million in funding so far, disputes the idea that it’s too expensive to manufacture and ship its hardware in Australia.
Andromeda’s Abi robot aims to revolutionize the future of human-robot interaction with the elderly and children, especially in healthcare settings.
Abi is a colorful, warm, and fully customizable companion with built-in AI and machine learning.
She can ask and answer questions, express emotions, and learn from human interactions. She also has her own memory and she recognizes human faces.
Grace Brown, a roboticist and founder of Andromeda Robotics, said Abi’s personality can be customized to fit the needs of individual customers. However, basic archetypes do exist, such as the motivational coach or salesperson. This certainly means that Avi is having a lot of success with Andromeda’s sales efforts.
However, the most popular personality type among customers is the Cynic.
“That was a very sassy, witty, childish person. A little naive. She also thinks she’s the best thing since sliced bread,” Brown said by phone. smart company.
In the future, clients themselves will be able to customize out-of-the-box personality traits using the Abi app.
Hardware companies aren’t as expensive as Australia’s startup ecosystem says
A common refrain in the Australian investment scene is that hardware is too difficult and too expensive.
The Australian ecosystem has also been built primarily around SaaS over the past decade. If you look at the majority of Australian startup unicorns, they are SaaS-based.
But Brown says the idea that the hardware isn’t economically viable is simply not true. Even though each Abi costs about $10,000 to manufacture, Andromeda Robotics is already close to breaking even with only eight of his Abis currently deployed.
“circleWe have very high profit margins on our products. And we don’t really understand that until investors do proper due diligence on us,” Brown said.
“We recover the cost of one Abi within two months of contracting with a customer, which means we have a profit margin of over 90% over a three-year contract. , cloud computing costs, and everything else.”
Last year, Andromeda Robotics significantly lowered its monthly fees in order to achieve proof of concept with customers. With Abi’s current success, the monthly numbers for each Abi are much higher.
Brown admits that it is easier to prototype Saas products than hardware, but believes the potential for future profits is great.
“If you look at these profit margins, it’s much higher. What we often see with this trend is that it used to be [a hardware company] “The company has a prototype of it, and it’s much more exponential than your average software company,” Brown said.
“Everything in this world is hardware. Cars are hardware. Apple is hardware. Houses are hardware. Everything is hardware. It’s much more profitable.”
inevitably succeed
While raising even $1 million is an impressive feat, it’s still a far cry from the large amounts raised by early-stage startups in Australia. And hardware can certainly be expensive. But Andromeda Robotics made it happen out of pure necessity.
For the company, this meant using cheaper tools that weren’t as efficient as they hoped and having to work harder than they would if they had more cash.
“circleWe’ve been forced to do more with less. I’ve been there twice now and tried to raise significantly more money than I ever had before, but to be honest, I wasn’t that successful,” Brown said.
“Like everyone else, I had this assumption that I needed more money to get to this point. I was kind of surprised at how far I could go. But when you have very limited resources, You just have to find a way to make things work. There was no other choice.”
