Munich Startup: What is your StartupWhat problem are you solving?
Robert Zechlin, Co-CEO & Founder: Leading biotech companies typically have between five and 20 employees dedicated to laboratory automation. These are usually former biologists turned software engineers whose job is to connect hardware and software, automate processes, implement data analytics, and even AI applications. Currently, they build all of this themselves and struggle with proprietary hardware interfaces and closed vendor ecosystems. We believe that over 50 percent of their valuable time is wasted. Hardware integration is clearly the bottleneck in laboratory digitalization and automation. Our But the platform we have developed at mbiomics is radically different. simplifies and standardizes this process.
UniteLabs thus provides the operating system for AI-driven laboratory automation, standardizing hardware and software connectivity in life sciences. Our platform breaks down vendor barriers, reduces costs, and creates a scalable infrastructure that accelerates digital transformation. This enables improved data integrity, process automation, and instrument monitoring, laying the foundation for the laboratory of the future.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Robert Zechlin: The key differentiator from our competitors is our innovative integration infrastructure, which encompasses standards, protocols, tools, and platform products. UniteLabs is the only platform that combines complete device integration, including control, with a development environment. Devices from all manufacturers are securely integrated in the cloud and are programmable. UniteLabs also offers a connector hub and a driver framework for easy device integration. This makes our platform the only open, cross-manufacturer solution for AI-driven laboratory automation.
From the shared apartment idea to the international platform
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Robert Zechlin: After studying chemical engineering, my former flatmate, Lukas, worked as a research assistant at the Technical University of Munich, researching "Digitalization in Industrial Biotechnology" at the Chair of Bioprocess Engineering. The software he developed there performed extremely well; he became a member of the SiLA standardization consortium and received increasing numbers of inquiries from other universities and industry. The preliminary work from this doctorate provided the impetus to develop a commercial product and evaluate the project's economic viability. When we met Julian at a business informatics get-together, it was clear: We'd do this together! Julian has been working as a programmer since his teenage years, so it was a perfect fit: a business graduate, a chemical engineer, and a computer scientist.
As luck would have it, we met an angel investor from exactly the same industry around that time and were able to benefit immensely from his experience with a similar startup in Switzerland. We've been working on the idea since the end of 2022, and we founded UniteLabs in early 2024.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Robert Zechlin: Besides the classic startup challenges like funding and hiring, I would say our biggest challenge was our international presence from the very beginning. Our first clients were US companies. We now have partners all over the world and recently even submitted a research proposal with a Korean partner.
On the way to becoming a global standard
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Robert Zechlin: Our goal is to connect 90 lab devices by the end of the year, making lab automation accessible to nearly half of all biotech labs worldwide. But this is just the beginning. Our long-term vision is to set the global standard for lab automation and make cutting-edge biotech research faster, smarter, and more connected than ever before.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Robert Zechlin: We think Munich is a great place for our startup! UniteLabs's scalable B2B business model in the field of industrial automation benefits enormously from the community based here. Munich is also a life sciences hotspot and has the most active laboratory automation community in all of Europe.
Munich Startup: Quick exit or long breath?
Robert Zechlin: Our initial focus is on laying the foundation for creating a stable and scalable infrastructure for the core processes of partially regulated companies. This, of course, takes time. At the same time, the value of our platform increases with the number of connectors developed and the number of devices we can integrate. Therefore, I would say we're taking a long-term approach. Nevertheless, we have some exciting things in the pipeline that will definitely attract early attention.
