A young Californian startup created by four Russians could well become one of tomorrow’s leaders in robotics automation. Two years after inception, it has just raised $20 million from international investors — with a valuation exceeding $100 million, according to Forbes Russia.
Thanks to ElectroNeek’s robotic process automation platform, businesses can now create more easily digital workforce and personal assistants. As reported by Forbes Russia, the company sold $300,000 worth of “digital employees” in 2019, its first year of activity, and $1 million in the first half of 2020.
In total, Eletroneek’s annual software licence revenue increased five-fold last year: the growth was fuelled by “an increased demand for business process automation and digital transformation by American mid-market companies and by increasing ElectroNeek’s presence outside of the United States, including into areas such as India and the LATAM region.”
Company co-founder Alexey Astafyev told the business magazine his company currently operates in a variety of areas — from North and Latin America, to Western and Eastern Europe, to the Middle East, to India. According to him, ElectroNeek serves “more than 250 customers from more than 40 countries. Its flagship product is ‘Studio Pro,’ an award-winning integrated development environment for robotics process automation (RPA) — to put it simply, a software that identifies processes that can be automated.
Seven in ten ElectroNeek customers are system integrators that buy an annual subscription to the Studio Pro tool and use it to create robots for their clients. Astafyev expects that system integrators will account for an even larger fraction of the company’s customer base in the future.
The investor consortium includes Baring Vostok, the Russian PE/VC giant headed by US citizen Michael Calvey (arrested in Moscow in 2019), as well as Softline Venture Partners, the venture arm of a Russian IT major. Two US-based investment firms with Russian roots were also involved in the round — New York city-based I2BF Global Ventures, which focuses on cleantech, biotechnology, materials science, IT and space technology sectors; and Boston-based YellowRockets, which specializes in robotics and automation technologies — in addition to other unnamed investors.
As per CrunchBase data, the company previously attracted $3.7 million in several rounds from 13 investors, including Russian business angel Sergey Dashkov, US accelerator Y Combinator, and New York City VC firm 645 Ventures.
ElectroNeek was founded in 2019 by Alexey Astafyev, Dmitry Karpov, Mikhail Rozhin and Sergey Yudovsky. The company is headquartered in San Francisco with an East coast office in New York City, with a team of “more than 60 seasoned automation professionals.”
