Peppermint Robotics bags Rs 100 crore pre-Series B for cleaning robots
By Arjun MehtaSenior Business Editor, Peepals Business
Representative image: ed_rsnhr / Pixabay
Pune's Peppermint Robotics, which makes autonomous floor-cleaning robots, raised Rs 100 crore in a pre-Series B round led by pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners.
What Happened
Peppermint Robotics, a Pune-based company that builds autonomous robots for cleaning large commercial floors and moving materials, has raised Rs 100 crore (about $10.5 million) in a pre-Series B funding round. The round, reported on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, was led by pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners, with Asiana Fund also taking part. It combined fresh capital for the company with secondary transactions, in which existing shareholders sold some of their shares to the new investors. The company has not disclosed how the Rs 100 crore was split between the two parts.
Key Facts
- Company: Peppermint Robotics, founded in 2019 and based in Pune, Maharashtra; founder and chief executive Runal Dahiwade.
- Round: pre-Series B, Rs 100 crore (about $10.5 million).
- Lead investors: pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners; Asiana Fund also invested.
- Structure: a mix of primary capital and secondary share sales; the split was not disclosed.
- Products: autonomous robots for commercial floor cleaning and for moving materials inside factories and warehouses (intralogistics).
- Market: the United States has become the company's largest market, according to reports of the announcement.
- Earlier funding: a Rs 34 crore (around $4 million) Series A round in April 2025.
Why It Matters
Most Indian robotics start-ups still sell mainly to Indian customers. Peppermint is one of a small group building hardware in India and selling it abroad, with the United States now its biggest market. Its robots clean the floors of large buildings such as factories, warehouses, airports and malls, and move goods from one point to another, jobs that are repetitive and hard to staff in countries with high labour costs. That is where demand for cleaning automation has grown fastest.
The investors are specialists. pi Ventures backs deep-technology companies, those built on new engineering or science rather than on an app or a business model. Crane Venture Partners is a London-based fund that invests in industrial and enterprise technology. A pi Ventures partner, Shubham Sandeep, said the firm backed Peppermint because of its work on industrial cleaning and intralogistics robots and its international expansion. The presence of a foreign industrial-tech fund alongside an Indian deep-tech investor points to the company's export focus.
The fresh money is meant for research and engineering, a bigger manufacturing operation, operations in North America, expansion into more markets abroad, and hiring senior leaders and engineers, according to reports of the company's plans. Hardware companies need much more money than software companies to grow, because every unit sold has to be built, shipped, installed and serviced. A larger factory lowers the cost of each robot, which matters when competing with established cleaning-machine makers from Europe, the United States and China.
The secondary part of the round is also worth noting. Secondary sales let early backers and sometimes employees turn part of their holdings into cash without the company being sold or listed. They do not add to the company's own bank balance, which is why the primary portion is the figure that decides how much it can spend on growth.
Peepals calculation: the company has reported revenue growth of nearly six times between FY24 and FY26, with revenue doubling in the last financial year. If revenue doubled from FY25 to FY26, the jump from FY24 to FY25 works out to about three times (6 divided by 2). The new round is also about 2.9 times the size of the Rs 34 crore Series A (100 divided by 34). Our calculation from the reported figures.
| Round | When | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Series A | April 2025 | Rs 34 crore (about $4 million) |
| Pre-Series B | November 2026 | Rs 100 crore (about $10.5 million) |
Impact
Short-term: Peppermint can expand production and its team, and invest in its North American business, where its largest customers now are.
Long-term: If it can keep growing abroad, the company could become one of the few Indian hardware firms with a real export business in robots, which would support the government's push for electronics and engineering manufacturing. Competition from larger global makers of cleaning machines will be the main test.
Who is affected: Engineers and manufacturing workers in Pune, where the company builds its robots; facility managers of large buildings who buy cleaning automation; and investors watching India's deep-tech hardware companies.
Key Takeaway
Peppermint Robotics' Rs 100 crore pre-Series B round shows investors backing an Indian robot maker whose largest market is the United States.
Questions and Answers
How much did Peppermint Robotics raise and who led the round?
Peppermint Robotics raised Rs 100 crore, about $10.5 million, in a pre-Series B round led by pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners, with Asiana Fund also investing. The round was reported on 4 November 2026.
What does Peppermint Robotics make?
The Pune company builds autonomous robots that clean large commercial floors and robots that move materials inside factories and warehouses, without a human driving them.
Is all of the Rs 100 crore new money for the company?
No. The round mixed fresh capital with secondary share sales by existing shareholders. The company did not say how the amount was divided.
Where does Peppermint Robotics sell its robots?
The United States has become its largest market, and the company plans to use part of the new money for its North American operations and wider global expansion.
Disclaimer: Prepared by the Peepals newsroom from publicly available sources with AI assistance. Information is accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication and may change. Images may be representative. Not professional advice. Report an error via our contact page.
By Arjun Mehta, Senior Business EditorCovers Start-ups & Opportunities and more for Peepals Business. All stories by Arjun Mehta
HFCL, Sterlite Tech, MTAR hit 5% lower circuits as AI stocks slide
Rabi sowing 2026 down 46% by October 30; gram, pulses fall furthest
Get the day's stories in your inbox
Peepals Weekly: the week decoded, free. One email a week, unsubscribe in one click.
Arjun Mehta is a pen name of the Peepals Global Editorial Team, which researches, fact-checks and publishes every story. The portrait is an illustration.
