10Lines raises 700 000 € in seed round for autonomous line marking robot technology

10Lines, the Estonian start-up that has developed autonomous parking lot and road marking robots, has announced a seed round of 700 000 € led by Tera Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage global digital start-ups, with co-investment from US investor Perot Jain.

We are glad to announce that one of the ESA BIC incubants 10Lines has developed technology for parking lot and road marking that will allow operators to replace the existing manual process with an automated solution. The company’s robots can complete line markings seven times faster than current processes, cutting out exhaustive measuring and pre-marking and significantly reducing the requirement for human oversight, while saving around 1.9 tons of CO2 emissions per robot per year.

10Lines has already started reference projects in Estonia and signed letters of intent with striping companies in the US. The investment from Tera and Perot Jain will allow the company to complete the development and production of its technology, begin scaling the business and bring on additional team members.

Tarmo Prints, CEO of 10Lines, commented:

“10Lines is a unique product with the potential to disrupt a huge market, which to date has been almost entirely untouched by technology. At present, parking lots across the globe are marked and re-marked – often annually – in a time and resource-intensive process involving experienced teams of workers. In the US alone there are 800 million parking lots, which would cost around $6 billion to mark. Our robots are a tech-enabled solution to this problem, combining huge efficiencies with a fast payback time.”

10Lines was founded in 2019 by Tarmo Prints, the co-owner of a traditional parking lot marking company in Estonia with more than 10 years’ experience in the industry, and Janno Paas, an experienced start-up CTO and AI developer.

The company’s robots use satellite positioning in combination with other sensors enabling accuracy within 1-2cm. The software will allow users to map sites digitally and set the robot in motion, cutting out much of the measuring and pre-marking process that currently accounts for 70% of the time required to mark parking lots, while at the same time reducing errors. Traditional teams of 2-4 people will be replaced by a single person operating the robots.

To date, 10Lines has been self-funded and won grant funding first place awards from Prototron and MyGalileoSolution, amounting to 125,000 €.

Janno Paas, CTO of 10Lines, added:

“We are delighted to partner with Tera, whose hands-on approach and global network will be vital as we seek to scale rapidly in Europe and particularly the US. At present, we offer a single, complete solution for the parking lot sector, but in future we plan to expand into related areas such as airports, harbours and road marking. In addition, our technology has enormous potential to help pave the way for autonomous vehicles and future smart cities.”

James P. McDougall, Founding Partner at Tera Ventures, commented:

“We are excited to support Tarmo and Janno on their journey, who have a clear vision for their technology and its global potential. They have already assembled a high-calibre team of engineers and software experts and we look forward to helping them bring this exciting product to market. We are also delighted to be joined in this round by Perot Jain – a highly strategic co-investor who brings important connections and has significant value-added contacts and channels in the key US market.”