Home Service Robot Company Zbeetle Secures Over 100 Million Yuan in Financing
Chinese media outlet 36Kr reported on Friday that Zbeetle, a home service robot company, has completed two rounds of financing. The first round was jointly led by Cathay Capital and Zoo Capital, while the second round was jointly led by Ince Capital and Maison Capital, followed by Cathay Capital and Zoo Capital. The overall financing was over 100 million yuan ($16 million).
The new funds will be mainly used for team building and research and development of XWOW automatic floor washing robot products.
In January, 2021, Zheng Quan, a former employee of Microsoft and LVMI (Aqara), founded Zbeetle, an intelligent home service robot company. His original business aspiration was to build a matrix of intelligent home service robots, so that the firm’s products could truly enter thousands of households.
The XWOW automatic floor washing robot, the first product of Zbeetle, integrates and improves mopping performance of hand-held floor washing machines, on the basis of a sweeper, through breakthrough innovations in its body construction, core algorithm and mop structure.
As for the founding team, Zheng Quan, the firm’s CEO, has more than 16 years of working experience in internet and intelligent hardware products. He has worked at IBM & Microsoft MACH, and later served as Vice President of LVMI (Aqara) & General Manager of Door Lock Center.
The firm’s COO Liang Ming has 20 years of experience working in group or enterprise strategy management and capital markets. He was the head of Apple’s global supply chain, establishing the firm’s supply chain asset IoT (Internet of Things) system from scratch. Its CMO Shen Yong was also the person in charge of Xiaomi‘s smart home appliance sales and operations, responsible for annual sales of a more than 10 billion yuan sales market.
According to previous media reports, there have been more than 10 financing events in the domestic sweeping robot industry in 2021. The largest financing sum was secured by Dreame, reaching 3.6 billion yuan in its C round of financing.
According to UBS’s forecast, by 2025, the global and Chinese sweeping robot market size will reach $13 billion and $5 billion, respectively. According to a report released by CITIC Securities, the penetration rate of domestic sweeping robots in urban households is still less than 8%, which means there is market space yet to be tapped.
