‘Impossible is Nothing’: Pavlo Pikulin Disrupts Logistics

The gaming industry and the logistics market may have more in common than first appears, according to Pavlo Pikulin, CEO and co-founder of Deus Robotics, and former head of a gaming company.

Pikulin’s aptitude for technology was evident early on. At 13, he was winning gaming competitions. He wrote several computer programs, including an automatic number-plate recognition system, which uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates and create vehicle location data. “It was the first AI system I created,” Pikulin says.

With this accomplishment, he understood that he could teach a computer to understand and recognize its environment, and that it would be possible to create autonomous vehicles and robots that could handle manual tasks.

At 19, Pikulin dreamed of creating a robotics company, but lacked resources. In addition, the robotics industry was in its infancy and few understood the value robots could offer.

He launched WhaleApp, a gaming studio, to generate funding for his future robotics company. WhaleApp eventually attracted more than 60 million players and reached $50 million in annual revenue.

In 2019, Pikulin started Deus Robotics, which is incorporated in the United States, with offices in Ukraine, Pikulin’s home country, and the UK. Deus Robotics offers a unified AI platform designed to connect, manage, and optimize any type of robot from any provider used in warehouse automation. “Robotics technologies will change our lives very unexpectedly, and for most people, in a good way,” he says.

Pikulin shares his thoughts with Inbound Logistics.

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IL: What challenges did you face when you launched Deus Robotics, and how did you tackle them?

We started by designing construction robots but quickly switched to logistics. In logistics, robots can make a huge difference across many processes immediately.

One challenge we faced was our lack of logistics expertise. Our founding team had profound expertise in AI, robotics, and hardware, but robotics and AI engineers usually don’t have expertise in logistics. To address this, we needed to work with a big logistics company to get a chance to unite our skills in AI and robotics with their skills in logistics.

We got this opportunity when Nova Post, Ukraine’s largest private delivery company, approached us about a project to automate their warehouse operations using robots. At the time, we only had construction robots, but Nova Post needed a logistics solution.

My team had just one month to build a robot from scratch. They pulled it off, because they’re incredible. Since then, we’ve also automated Nova Post’s order fulfillment operations and helped boost efficiency three-fold.

I walked away from this experience with three key lessons: First, always believe in yourself and your team, no matter how impossible something seems. Second, if you need to move fast, don’t aim for perfect. If it works, it’s good enough for now. Third, when you see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, do everything you can to grab it.

This experience reinforced a quote from Muhammad Ali that I live by: “Impossible is nothing.”

In another situation, a logistics company asked our team to automate a department that handles cargo of different sizes and weights that couldn’t be placed on a standard sorting conveyor line. Developing such a complex solution would usually take at least six months. We did it in 10 weeks.

We managed to move this fast thanks to two things. First, our team includes 11 PhD students. We’re experts in boosting warehouse efficiency with robots. Robotic automation is what we live and breathe.

And as a company of 36 people, we can make quick decisions and swiftly adapt to our client’s needs. A great deal of planning, hard work, and a bit of luck helped tremendously.

IL: How do you handle pushback?

When I launched my company and described my ideas and vision, some said they were impossible. Leaders need to believe in their goals and vision and not to surrender.

At the same time, we need to understand where we can fail, where we need to pay attention, and where the critical problem points are. If something fails, it’s a lesson, not a hard stop. It’s a lesson that I need to change something and go forward.

IL: How do you get people to look at an issue from a different perspective?

When I see that someone needs to look at an issue from a different side, I never say they’re doing something wrong. Instead, I ask: ‘If you look at this problem from this side, what do you think?’ Even if I know the answer, I want to see them acknowledge the need to look from another direction. Next time, they may try to look at it from a different angle on their own.

IL: What lessons that you learned earlier in your career remain relevant today?

My experience in the gaming industry has been valuable in many key areas. For example, we are creating virtual worlds in robotics simulation systems. It’s a game-changer in robotics because experimenting in a virtual environment offers a quicker and more efficient way to test ideas without waiting months for physical prototypes. My experience in the gaming industry was very handy in this case.

IL: What’s the new direction of your company?

At the start, we built our own robots. But creating many types of robots would take more time than I expected. I now understand that it’d be faster to focus on the software side, which is also our strong suit.

In 2024, we stopped manufacturing to focus on our AI platform, which can connect our robots and robots from other manufacturers and make them smarter. The dream is to automate everything, in logistics and elsewhere. A platform that helps robots communicate with businesses and each other becomes even more important.

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You Need a Plan

The characteristics or attributes most important for leaders include believing in yourself, and good communication skills so you can share your vision with your team, says Pavlo Pikulin, CEO and co-founder of Deus Robotics.

Good leaders also need empathy because they manage people, not robots. “All people are different; they understand differently,” he says. “You need to try and understand their different perspectives, and how they feel about what you’re saying.

“Good leaders need to be strong mentally, because success passes,” Pikulin notes. “You’ll fail in one or another thing and then need to overcome it. When people on the team are upset when things don’t go well, but they see that you’re moving forward, their motivation increases.

“You also should have a plan,” he adds. “It can change, but you need a plan.”

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