Tamil Nadu-based Indian manufacturing start-up Frigate has raised $1.5 million in its seed-funding round led by Arali Ventures. The round also saw the participation of Capital-A, Java Capital and some other strategic investors. 

With the infusion of funds, the company will expand its digital manufacturing ecosystem to cater to its global customer base.
Founded in 2021 by Tamizhinian Vasanthan, Karthikeyan Prakash, Chandrasekar C, and Iniyavan Vasanthan, Frigate® has claimed to be a  B2B (business-to-business) cloud manufacturing platform that offers a comprehensive suite of manufacturing services to medium and large-scale companies globally. 

The company has specialised in executing projects within the New Energy & Power, Infrastructure, EV sectors, and Automotive industries with a focus on Heavy Fabrication, Sheet metal, Castings, Forgings, and Injection molding. It has collaborated with more than 200 manufacturing partners, known as Frigaters located in Tier 2 cities such as Coimbatore, Trichy, Hosur, Jamnagar, Ludhiana, Kolhapur and Kolar

Talking about the latest fundraising round, Tamizhinian Vasanthan, Founder & CEO stated “On the demand side, Frigate provides Manufacturing-as-a-Service to global customers, offering globally competitive pricing, better lead time, and Best in-class manufacturing with quality. Our customers consider us as an extended supply chain partner from New Product Development to Mass production. Frigate is helping overseas customers who are looking at China +1 policy to set up a manufacturing base in India.”
 
Karthikeyan Prakash, Co-Founder and CPO added “Through our proprietary AI-enabled tech platform, we enable demand-supply matching, standardization showcasing our partners' capacity, capability, and availability and complete transparency from sales to order fulfilment. This approach has the potential to drive job creation and economic growth while making India a manufacturing superpower.”
 
Arun Raghavan, Managing partner at Arali Ventures said, “The manufacturing sector from India has significant tailwinds driving it forward. The B2B manufacturing business is poised like IT services was in the late 90s. OEMs, especially in new age industries, across the globe are looking for long-term partners who will help them build out their vendor development, contract manufacturing partners and supply chain capabilities; the Frigate team with its all-round manufacturing, new product development and operations management capabilities are best suited to execute on this going forward.”