Peppermint Robotics Raises ₹100 Cr Pre-Series B
Pune-and-Austin robotics company Peppermint has raised ₹100 crore (about $10.5 million) in a pre-Series B led by pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners, part of it secondary.
Peppermint Robotics, which builds autonomous cleaning robots in Pune and Austin, has raised ₹100 crore (about $10.5 million) in a pre-Series B round. pi Ventures and Crane Venture Partners led it, and Asiana Fund also took part.
Part of the round is secondary.
Primary money and secondary sales
The release says the round combines new primary capital with secondary share transactions, and it does not say how much of the ₹100 crore is which. Primary money goes into the company to build and hire. Secondary money goes to existing shareholders who sell some of their stake, so it does not add to Peppermint's own budget. The company says only the primary capital will be put to work across five areas, and anyone reading the headline figure should keep that in mind.
What the robots do and where
Runal Dahiwade founded Peppermint in 2019 out of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIT Bombay, and he is the founder and CEO. The company makes robots for commercial floor cleaning and for moving materials. It says they run in factories, hospitals, airports, malls, warehouses, hotels and universities, and that it sells mainly to facility management companies that already run cleaning operations. It builds its hardware, software and perception systems in-house and assembles the robots in Pune. The machines use computer vision and LiDAR to map a site, plan a cleaning route and avoid obstacles, and the company also offers offline robots for security-sensitive sites. At an unnamed global pharmaceutical company, its cleanroom robots passed qualification testing in an EU GMP Grade cleanroom.
Growth claims with no revenue number
Peppermint says its revenue doubled last year and grew nearly sixfold between FY24 and FY26. It has not published absolute revenue, so the multiples cannot be turned into rupees. It raised ₹34 crore in a Series A in April 2025, when it reported a presence in six countries. It now reports nine, with the US as its largest market.
A sixfold rise from a small base is easier than a sixfold rise from a large one.
Where the primary capital goes
Peppermint lists five uses for the primary money:
- Next-generation robotics and its CR line of cleanroom robots
- Manufacturing capacity, tooling and production infrastructure
- An assembly line in North America over the coming months
- Business development across the US and Asia, and a bigger presence in Europe
- Senior leadership and engineering hires
Dahiwade said the customers judge the company on a clean floor every shift, which is why it builds heavy-duty robots meant to last several years. The investors gave their own reasons. A partner at pi Ventures pointed to returns in healthcare and hospitality, and Crane's India and Asia-Pacific head said the cleanroom robot stands out because it is a production-grade machine and not a demonstration.
The US bet and its limits
Moving final assembly closer to American customers makes sense when the US is the biggest market, because service and parts are easier near the customer. US policy toward foreign robots is also changing. The US has barred new Chinese-made humanoid robots and robot dogs, as we reported in our story on the restriction on new Chinese robot imports. That order named neither floor-cleaning robots nor Peppermint, so it should not be read as a tailwind for the company.
Indian robotics is drawing more money at several stages, from ANSCER Robotics' ₹45 crore Series A to Coratia Technologies' ₹66 crore Indian Navy deal. In my view, Peppermint's next test is whether the North American assembly line lowers its cost per robot enough to compete on price, because its main customers are facility management companies that run cleaning as a cost-sensitive service.
