Maidbot, Inc., a robotics company that created Rosie, the first housekeeping robot and indoor mobile data platform for hotels and commercial buildings, announced today it received a strategic investment from BISSELL, Inc.
BISSELL led the investment round with participation from existing and new investors including 1517 Fund, Comet Labs, and Rough Draft Ventures, along with strategic hospitality and industrial cleaning organizations. The investment will help the company expand its sales and marketing efforts, build out its engineering capabilities, and accelerate Maidbot’s transition to mass production.
The financing will enable Maidbot to maintain the momentum it has built over the last year through successful pilot programs with some of the world’s leading hotel brands. “The value of Maidbot’s product offering goes well beyond the functional benefits of utilizing a robotic vacuum to assist with housekeeping operations. Their robots serve as mobile data platforms that generate a myriad of information on the building environment and operations that enables hotel operators to improve both the housekeeping and customer experiences,” Ryan McLean, senior vice president of BISSELL, Inc., says. “We have seen the adoption and impact of robotic vacuums in households, and we believe that we are going to see similar trends in commercial cleaning for spaces like hospitality and office. Maidbot is leading the robotic transition in the hospitality industry, and we are excited to collaborate with and support them as they work to build a great company in an exciting category.”
Maidbot’s first product—Rosie—is an autonomous floor cleaner that provides safe and cost-efficient automated solutions to the hospitality industry while collecting actionable data to empower managers and operators. Rosie decreases the time required to clean a room and reduces work-related injuries while improving the room attendant and guest experiences, the company says. Housekeepers have one of the highest injury rates in the hotel industry and the entire private sector, according to a 2012 report by UCLA. The Maidbot team saw an opportunity to bring innovation to an industry that was sorely lacking in the change department.
“It’s been the same for over 100 years. The biggest innovation in housekeeping has been an electric vacuum which came out in 1905,” Micah Green, founder and CEO of Maidbot, says. The company says that hotel operators who use Maidbot’s system see an increase in profitability, healthier and happier staff, and higher guest satisfaction. “Although room attendants were unsure of Rosie at first, they love her now: they reported feeling a lot less back, shoulder, and wrist pain after just a few days and the operators appreciate happier team members. They have also told us that the data we can collect is just as valuable as the efficiency itself,” Green explains.
The company will continue with its ongoing pilot programs through mid-2018 and expects to deliver its first products by late 2018.
