Fabheads, a Chennai-based startup focused on automated manufacturing in the carbon fiber (and other composites) space, has raised Rs 8 crore in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures, one of India’s largest angel investment platforms in India. Existing investors Keiretsu (Chennai Chapter) and Mr. Vijay Kedia also participated. The funds raised will be utilized in strengthening R&D team, build global sales and distribution and setting up infrastructure to support growth.
Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Venture says, “Fabheads is a deep-tech startup which has built proprietary technology that can compete with the best in the world in a space dominated by only few large well-funded startups / publicly listed companies and where the use cases have the potential to grow exponentially in the near future. With the founders’ background from ISRO, we believe their expertise in robotics and 3D technology will help the company grow faster. Our network and the funds raised will help them achieve their ambition to scale across the world.”
Fabheads developed India’s first 3D printer capable of printing with continuous fiber materials. It is also the winner of the National Award for Technology Startups (2021) by the Department of Science and Technology, National Startup Awards (2020) in the 3D Printing Category by Startup India, DRDO’s DaretoDream Award (2019), JEC’s Outstanding Innovation in composites award (2018) and the Top Startup in Manufacturing (2018) by CII.
Currently, the startup is offering design and manufacturing services to drones, robotics, and shipping companies across India. A few of its portfolio companies are E-plane Company, Synergy Marine, Planys and ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency). It has also onboarded a couple of Singapore clients and recently started pilot operations across Asia.
Dhinesh Kanagaraj, Founder & CEO, Fabheads and ex-ISRO engineer says, “IPV is one of the few investors who see the value in deep tech hardware startups. IPV team took great efforts towards understanding our offerings and have also gone beyond that by already adding value to Fabheads by making extremely relevant connections via their large business network across India and the Middle East.”
The biggest value addition made by Fabheads to their clients is offering the flexibility to use their in-house certified raw materials. This factor is of extreme importance in the biomedical and aerospace industries as the clients go through decades of research to certify their materials.
Fabheads serves a large carbon fiber parts market which is a global market of $60 Billion with an annual CAGR of 14%. The Indian market alone is $5 Billion. Carbon fibers are used to make several high-performance parts from tennis racquets to rockets having applications across Sports, Automotive, Wind Energy Sector, Shipping, Aerospace, etc. and Fabheads plans to slowly expand into more sectors and geographies down the line.
