In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine newly funded companies KiwiBot, Agentio & Ampeco.
1. KiwiBot
The on-demand economy continues to evolve, even after almost 15 years of existence. One of its recent developments to optimize last-mile logistics is delivery robots . To further develop and expand this on-demand economy subsegment, Kiwibot has launched a “rent-a-robot” offering. This takes some of the capital investment out of the equation for local businesses that want to get into the dark arts of autonomous delivery. This takes form in what the company calls a “robot-as-a-service” (RaaS) package, and flows from its recent acquisition of advertising firm Nickelytics. Why an advertising platform? That gets into its plan for renting delivery robots. The units serve as small mobile billboards which improve the unit economics of the rental model. By creating moving ad impressions, it expands monetization in its fleet of robots while also bringing the price down for local businesses to rent the robots. Its plan is to serve SMBs and others, and it has already gotten a start by working with a few universities and food delivery companies.
2. Agentio
One component of the broader SMB world that we often cover is the creator economy. Many creators and influencers are small businesses and need SMB SaaS tools to manage their operations, just like any traditional SMB does. And we’ve seen a flood of products over the past decade to do just that – everything from tech/production tools to monetization/networks (see Hummingbirds) to traditional finance and operational tools like Quickbooks. Agentio now wants to join that ecosystem and it recently raised $12 million in Series A funding (totaling $16 million in funding to date), led by Benchmark. In short, the company provides a platform that makes it easier for brands to find creators and influencers whose content, production, and overall persona match their own branding and goals. That includes vetting creators for key attributes like brand safety. Its focus for now is YouTube creators and it already works with several brands like DoorDash, Notion, HelloFresh, and MintMobile. And it’s growing, given a 2.35x jump in year-over-year revenue. Going forward, The company plans to use its cash infusion to scale up its marketplace for YouTubers and embolden its platform with more AI that can run predictive analysis on creators’ brand safety.
3. Ampeco
One of the things holding back the EV revolution is the charging infrastructure. It’s a bit of a chicken & egg dilemma, with EV sales held back by the lack of charging-station density… and charging networks’ hesitance to grow without ample EV penetration. Meanwhile, there’s fragmentation in charging standards including Tesla’s standard and a long-tail of others. Ampeco wants to empower the latter with a platform that helps EV charging companies and OEMs streamline their operations and logistics. Part of that is to help determine the most strategic locations for charging stations to maximize their yield (think: underserved areas). That last part is where local businesses come in, as the platform can serve as a marketplace for charging-station OEMs and local businesses that want to monetize their locations by hosting charging stations. Beyond hosting the physical space, there are second-order effects for local businesses, such as gaining customers and foot traffic among EV owners that need to stop and charge up. The company already has 160 clients across 60 markets and 120,000 charging stations. It recently raised. $26 million in Series B funding, which brings its total funding to date to $42 million.
