CEO of Serve Robotics, Ali Kashani, joins Yahoo Finance to talk about the goal of replacing 5% of food delivery with robots.
Video Transcript
- So one thing we've learned during the pandemic is that not only have traditional businesses had to adapt, but the whole concept of delivery, whether it be food, retail delivery, it is adapting, and technology is leading the way. We want to bring back into the stream, Ali Kashani, Serve Robotics CEO and former head of Postmates X at Uber, it's good to have you back. In fact, the last time we talked about this issue, the goal was to replace I think it was 5% of food delivery with the robots. And let's just face the facts, your robots are so darn cute, those little bots that you're testing. When is this really going to take place? Because many of us in New York City are tired of dodging the bicyclists who are going to run us over when they run the red lights.
- Thanks for having me. Yes, I think next year is going to be a big year for this effort. We are going to see our economy commercialized for the first time. With these robots rolling out in a few major cities, I think in the next two or three years you are going to see them in every major city in the country, actually.
- Ali, this is Emily here. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm wondering, how high is the barrier to entry in this space? Because it seems like given the labor shortages we've seen throughout the year, a lot of companies would want to get into automating their deliveries in some form.
- Absolutely. There is a number of problems you have to solve. We've been very lucky that we started over 4 and 1/2 years ago. You have to develop your own hardware, because a vehicle for sidewalk delivery doesn't exist. You can't just buy it off the shelf. And you have to develop autonomy, which still is a challenging piece of technology to make. And we've been working on this for about 4 and 1/2 years now. So it's kind of very fortunate timing for us because we can now bring it to market at scale, the work that we've been doing for so many years.
