Munich Startup: What problem do you solve?
Marco Brizzolara, Co-Founder & CEO of Elvio Robotics: Hospitals are currently facing massive staffing and cost pressures, while many repetitive transport, logistics, and cleaning tasks are still handled manually. Yet a significant portion of these could be automated using robotics. Today, however, robots are mostly introduced as isolated standalone solutions, leaving much of their potential untapped. That is why Elvio provides an integrated automation system that connects robotics, infrastructure, and processes—making hospital automation safe, cost-effective, and scalable.
Different Robots, One Central Platform
Munich Startup: What can only you do as of today?
Johannes Drexler, Co-Founder & CTO of Elvio Robotics: We combine vendor-agnostic robotics for small transport jobs, container transport, and floor cleaning—and soon also patient transport—with our software platform Elvio OS and seamless integration into hospital infrastructure to deliver a turnkey system. This allows hospitals to centrally manage different types of robots and automate additional processes step by step.
Munich Startup: What was the trigger for founding the company?
Marco Brizzolara: The trigger was a visit to a large municipal hospital. There, we were told very clearly: what’s missing isn’t yet another standalone robot, but a provider that builds a functional end-to-end system, reliably automates processes, and takes infrastructure into account. Because unreliable isolated solutions usually provide little to no relief, only additional costs. That was precisely the starting point for Elvio Robotics. We wanted to bring robotics, software, infrastructure, and processes together so that hospitals don’t have to coordinate disparate solutions, but instead get automation from a single source.
Munich Startup: Was there a moment when you thought about giving up?
Marco Brizzolara: We’ve never thought about giving up. But every day we realize just how extraordinarily complex the implementation is. In a hospital, it’s not enough for a robot to work technically – processes, infrastructure, safety, and organization have to interact seamlessly. It’s precisely this complexity that is challenging, but it also confirms why there is finally a need for a systems provider like us that enables large-scale automation in hospitals.
Munich Startup: How will you know in a year that you’re on the right track?
Johannes Drexler: When our systems are operating reliably in regular hospital operations across multiple facilities and staff members say they never want to go back to the old process. At the same time, we want to see that additional robots, processes, and infrastructure components can be integrated continuously faster. That’s when we’ll know that we’re not just implementing projects, but building a scalable platform.
From an individual project to a scalable platform
Munich Startup: Would you found in Munich again and why?
Marco Brizzolara: Yes. Munich is an exceptionally good location for a robotics company: strong technical talent, excellent universities and research, industrial expertise, capital, and a dense healthcare ecosystem. Especially at the intersection of software, hardware, and hospitals, this combination is extremely valuable.
Johannes Drexler: In addition, both the City of Munich and the Free State of Bavaria have created an environment in which startups can truly scale up. Numerous examples of successfully scaled startups demonstrate this fertile overall ecosystem and serve, in a way, as role models for us. Even investors from Silicon Valley have Munich on their radar as an established startup hub.
Munich Startup: Perfection or speed?
Johannes Drexler: Both – speed combined with absolute perfection in critical areas. As a startup, we have to develop, test, learn, and iterate quickly. But especially in hospital operations, 80 percent is not enough when it comes to safety and reliability. The art is therefore to be extremely fast in less critical areas – such as our user interfaces – without compromising on critical areas.
