talabat, a leading everyday app in the MENA region, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with QuikBot, a Singapore-based deep technology company that specializes in final-mile delivery for dense vertical cities. The agreement launches a live pilot of autonomous delivery robots designed to support riders in high-rise buildings. The initiative aims to make food deliveries faster for customers and the delivery process smoother for couriers.
The Challenge of High-Rise Deliveries
High-rise deliveries typically involve several time-consuming steps, including building check-in, elevator transit, and navigating to the customer's door. Each of these stages adds to overall delivery time and can reduce how many orders a rider completes. The pilot directly targets this final stretch by testing how building-integrated robotics can handle the most complex part of the journey.
How the Robotic Pilot Works
In the pilot, riders hand off orders to a QuikBot robot at a designated point within the building. The robot then completes the rest of the journey by taking the elevator and delivering the order directly to the customer's door. Customers retrieve their order using a one-time password, which removes this segment from the rider's workload and has the potential to increase overall delivery capacity.
A Trust Layer for Physical AI
QuikBot's robots operate through QuikSync, a trust layer for Physical AI that gives each robot a cryptographic identity and governs its interactions with buildings and people. This infrastructure underpins QuikBot's Autonomous Final-Mile Delivery Platform-as-a-Service, which already supports live operations with global logistics companies in Singapore and the UAE. The technology treats the building as a missing stakeholder in last-mile delivery by ensuring robots entering lobbies and lifts have verifiable identity, permission, and accountability.
Leadership Views on the Initiative
Simonida Subotic, Vice President and Managing Director of talabat UAE, said the pilot allows the company to explore how autonomous robotics can simplify building access and elevator transit for high-rise orders. She described it as an early but important step in talabat's broader commitment to innovation. Alan Ng, Founder and CEO of QuikBot, said the future of autonomous delivery for Smart Cities will be won by infrastructure, not just robots.
Pilot Scope and Operational Assessment
The live pilot is currently underway at Dubai Digital Park's A6 commercial building in Dubai Silicon Oasis. Over the course of the program, talabat and QuikBot will assess time savings for riders and how well their systems work together operationally. The companies will use these findings to explore deeper product integration and evaluate a potential wider rollout.
First-Mile Benefits and Future Expansion
QuikBot noted that the same infrastructure can run in reverse through First-Mile Pickup, with robots collecting orders inside malls and staging them at the curb for riders. This model can return an estimated 15 to 20 minutes of productive capacity to each rider every hour and augments rider teams rather than replacing them. With talabat, Dubai Digital Park serves as the first proof point, and QuikBot sees the Smart City as the next opportunity.
The partnership reflects talabat's ongoing commitment to innovation and its exploration of emerging technologies that can shape the future of delivery across the region. Findings from the pilot will help both companies determine whether a wider rollout of autonomous delivery robots is practical across talabat's operations. Ultimately, the collaboration aims to reinforce talabat's position in technology-driven logistics while improving delivery speed and the experience for riders and customers.