Bolt, a ride-hailing company, has confirmed that it is beginning to offer food delivery services utilising a selection of robots provided by Starship Technologies, a robotics business based in the U.S.A. To begin with, Bolt will make the deliveries available in Tallinn, Estonia, an announcement from the firm stated. This venture is a business partnership between the two firms and will eventually be expanded to cover the various areas in which both companies conduct operations.
Bolt, the Estonian ride-hailing firm boasting a $8.4 billion valuation, will be rolling out food deliveries to Tallinn using a fleet of self-driving robots in partnership with Starship Technologies. CEO Markus Villig expressed enthusiasm for the innovative service, saying that "[Bolt] is focused on providing well-rounded solutions to help make local transportation as sustainable as possible." The robots, which are the size of a suitcase, have been successfully in operation for five years. Beyond ride-hailing, Bolt has spread out to other ventures, such as food delivery, grocery delivery, and e-scooters, in challenging Uber's presence in key international markets like the U.K.
Established in 2013 and previously known as Taxify, Bolt has obtained more than $2 billion in investments up until now from companies such as Sequoia, IFC, which is a division of the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank. This has allowed them to grow a user base of 100 million customers covering 45 countries located in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Ordering food online from apps is now even easier with Bolt's Starship partnership! All you have to do is press a button and a robot will bring your meals or groceries to your doorstep. Wednesday's announcement is significant in that commercial deployment of this technology can now be achieved on a large scale. Initially, the robotic delivery system will be available in Tallinn, but more markets will follow soon.
Based in San Francisco and co-initiated by some of the founders of Skype, Starship already has a network of autonomous delivery robots operating in the U.S., primarily being employed by college students in conjunction with food delivery company Grubhub. Additionally, the firm has a comparable agreement in the U.K. and other European countries with supermarket Co-op. So far, Starship has collected about $200 million in investments. It is one of the many businesses presently experimenting with robots for food and other items delivery. In Asia, Chinese businesses have been ahead of the trend, with major food delivery application Meituan already testing robots in offices and hotels way back in 2019. Sadly, some efforts to utilize robot fleets for delivery have been confronted with issues, as there has been insignificant adoption of the technology. For example, in the U.S., Amazon discontinued its field tests of Scout, a delivery robot providing small packages to customers' residences, because of its cost-saving approach. WATCH: How many engineers does it take to make Dyson headphone? We tour its secret labs to find out.
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