BotCity extends its $2.5M seed funding round to build RPA solution for devs

Today, Brazilian startup and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform provider BotCity announced it has extended its $2.5 million seed funding round by $500,000 from YCombinator. 

BotCity aims to build a UiPath-style platform for developers that uses computer vision technology to recognize on-screen user interface components and implements automation to mimic a human user, so that developers can build more complex automation for any system. 

BotCity’s solution provides enterprises and technical decision makers with an accessible RPA solution that enables developers, who are often reliant on limited, pre-built automation platforms rather than code, to automate processes more efficiently. 

Developers need accessibility too 

When Gabriel Archanjo, a software engineer with a Master’s in IA, cofounded BotCity with entrepreneur and CEO Lorhan Caproni in 2020, they set out to build a solution that would enable developers to build custom automations they could deploy in any environment. 

While there were many accessible tools available for citizen developers, these solutions could only build simple automated processes, rather than the complex multi-platform ones that required inflexible automation platforms to complete. 

“Tech teams need to automate processes that are unique for their companies and can’t be solved by pre-built integrations. These processes involve multiple systems (web, desktop and legacy) and most of the time with no APIS available. When we interviewed lots of RPA squads, we saw that complex and game-changer automations can’t be built by citizen developers,” explained Caproni.. 

“When it gets to complex, scalable, multi-platform processes, it’s a developer’s job. And developers were stuck in low-code of the traditional automation platforms instead of using the power of code, scaling their productivity. BotCity was founded to close the gap of a complete automation stack for developers,” he said.

Becoming the RPA solution for developers 

BotCity is one of the newest entrants to the global robotic process automation market, a market worth $1.61 billion in 2020, which researchers anticipate will reach $7.64 billion by 2028 as more organizations look to automation to achieve operational excellence and optimize cost efficiency. 

One of the organization’s biggest competitors in the market is UiPath, which offers an end-to-end RPA platform used by organizations around the world from Google, DHL, Equifax, and Virgin Media to government institutions like the IRS. UiPath generated $221 million in revenue in the last quarter. 

Another competitor is Automation Anywhere, which has raised over $840 million in funding to date and has recently acquired cloud process discovery and mining company FortressIQ, offering enterprises a cloud-native RPA automation platform called Automation 360.

While these competitors are entrenched in the market, Caproni hopes that BotCity’s emphasis on building an accessible RPA platform for devs will help it stand out from the crowd. 

“From building to deploying and managing automations, everything was made from developers to developers. So, you can build your automation with code, and choose where to run your automations with no lock-up models,” he said. 

The funding round for BotCity was led by SoftBank Latin America and Astrella.