Growth Story
Founded in 2019 and incorporated in 2020, Kevares provides autonomous mobile robots to conduct a wide range of services, including inspections, lawn-mowing, litter collection and more. As these mobile robots are electric, Kevares contributes to reducing carbon footprint and increases efficiency by enabling its clients to allocate staff to more critical tasks, leaving repetitive or hazardous responsibilities to autonomous robots.
The Challenge
Joel Nascimento, the Founder of Kevares, wanted to explore Canada as a potential new market for his products but first required knowledge of the Canadian market, grant processes and municipal operations. He also needed connections within Canada’s innovation ecosystem to determine the validity of his products within the AI and Autonomous Vehicle Industry.
Synergy Lab educated Nascimento about the Canadian market and provided invaluable connections and introductions. One of these introductions was to the Spark Centre, where he received critical advice from industry experts and met with investors, funding agencies and key municipal players, such as the City of Oshawa and Queen’s University. These new relationships enabled Nascimento to establish the market value of his product.
Kevares Today
Within one year of incorporation, Kevares secured a two-year $240,000 R&D project in robotics and AI with the Ontario Centre of Innovation and Queen’s University and $50,000 worth of AI training at the University of Toronto’s data centre. Kevares also began collaborating with the City of Oshawa and Oshawa Teaching City for its first autonomous sidewalk inspections project. More recently, Kevares secured partnerships with the Oshawa Public Utility Company and Fortran Traffic Systems to launch two joint R&D projects and a project with MITACS Global Internship for up to three global interns to test autonomous lawn mowing and litter collection. Kevares has also begun discussions to establish pilot tests for last-mile delivery with local UAE agents and incubators in Dubai.