Karkhana.io, a B2B on-demand manufacturing platform, announced its seed round financing of $1.5 million led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India (Vertex Ventures SEA & India). The company also saw participation from several industry leaders and angel investors. With this funding, Karkhana.io aims to fuel further growth and establish their technology platform to meet the burgeoning demand for custom manufacturing in India’s manufacturing industry.
Established in June 2018, Karkhana.io aims to digitise and streamline the manufacturing industry in India. Founder and CEO, Sonam Motwani said, “Finding the right manufacturing vendor is a tedious and time-consuming process. The industry is still highly fragmented. There is no easy way to figure out which manufacturing process to go for, where to manufacture, and what is a fair price to pay, etc. We want to change this so that new products can go from prototyping to production seamlessly at a much quicker pace.”
Karkhana.io’s mission involves working with various types and sizes of manufacturers throughout the country and alleviating pain points that are prevalent across the supply chain: coordinating production and delivery for multiple small parts, delays, inconsistency in quality, lack of transparency, etc.
Karkhana.io’s manufacturing capabilities encompasses 3D printing, sheet metal work, CNC machining and injection moulding. The young start-up is already enabling building cutting edge technology in India – from deep-sea underwater robots to satellite and rocket for outer space to components for electric vehicles, IOT and FMCG industries.