A graduate from the University of Glasgow has secured £2 million in funding to ramp up sales of his company’s robotic lawn mowers in the UK and abroad.
Established in 2018 by Joan Kangro, an Estonian now living in Glasgow, Kingdom Technologies has developed several patented technologies for mapping, localisation and robotic perception that allow its mowers to understand and manoeuvre around their environment. Made for commercial customers who have large areas of grass to care for, the mowers are already used by a number of golf courses and local authorities.
Scottish Enterprise led the funding round, and was joined by investment groups Metaplanet, Ironwolf, Superangel and Specialist VC. The money will be used to scale up production to help meet nearly 400 pre-orders from customers in Europe and North America.
Mr Kangro, who has received support to date from the Scottish Edge competition and an RSE Unlocking Ambition Enterprise Fellowship, is particularly intent on targeting the US market.
“The investment comes at the right time for Kingdom,” he said. “Having conducted a lengthy period of development, we are now ready to expand our service across the UK, Europe and the US.
“We know from these extensive pilots that we have a reliable and robust product capable of operating in complicated environments. The next phase of our business is to manufacture more products and expand our offering to the US market.”
Mr Kangro was advised on the funding round by Harper Macleod, whose entrepreneurial team has supported Kingdom from an early stage. Rachel Miele of the law firm’s corporate team said it was good to see Kingdom attracting attention from global customers.
“With strong pre-orders and scale-up funding, Kingdom is in a position to grow from its Glasgow base to mow large lawns all over the world,” she said. “It’s been a privilege to work with Joan since Kingdom was first created, and we are looking forward to supporting him on the next stage of his journey.”
Kerry Sharp, director of investment at Scottish Enterprise, added: “We’ve supported Kingdom Technologies for some time so it’s great to see the company’s continued growth and expansion, including plans to create more Scottish jobs and to target the lucrative US market.”
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