Why we invested in Frigate?
Frigate does outsourced manufacturing, which is quick, risk-free, and affordable for OEMs, SMEs, and Startups.
Frigate supports various Manufacturing services such as Heavy & Light Engineering, Sheetmetal Fabrication, Injection Moulding, CNC Machining, 3D Printing, Stamping, etc., by partnering with manufacturers and suppliers across India.
Frigate is based out of Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu.
Frigate Founders
Dr. Tamizh Iniyan — Co-Founder & CEO, Prev — Deputy manager at Acoustics India, Engineer — FEA at CRI Pumps, Technical Project Manager at Crisp System, Development Engineer at Madhu Jayanti
Chandrasekar C — Co-Founder & Head of Sales, Prev — Deputy Manager -NPD (control Systems & IoT at CRI Pumps
Karthikeyan Prakash — Co-Founder & CPO, Prev — Director of IoT and AI at Techolution, Prev- SDE Smartron, SDE at Structural Solutions Private Limited
Iniyavan Vasanthan — Co-Founder & COO, Prev — Designer at Sunstream Global Technologies, Mechanical Design Engineer at CRI Pumps.
What is Frigate?
💡 What does Frigate do? Upload your CAD file with the selected process; Frigate gives you a quick quote.
The problems faced by stakeholders in the manufacturing ecosystem, such as OEM/Product Companies..
- Identifying the right vendors for manufacturing
- Lack of robust Tracking and Expediting, Quality Control, and Timely Delivery
And on the other side of the marketplace, Small Scale Manufacturers struggle with
- Lack of Order Management, Marketing, and Operations process
- Payment Follow up
Frigate solves the above problem through its platform by providing
- Transparency in order tracking and updates
- Certified Manufacturers & Suppliers with a rating system
- Quick Quote Generation, relationship management
- Connected machines for dynamic supply and demand match
Why we invested?
“We’ve Seen Innovation in Bits, But Not Enough in Atoms” — Peter Thiel
It is a common fact within the Startup ecosystem that hardware startups are hard. Because
- Hardware is complex
- Hardware is expensive
- The complexity of the supply chain and distribution channel
Even with this rapid progress in technology, the number of Hardware startups getting started/Funded is extremely small compared to Software startups.
💡 The AWS moment for Manufacturing is yet to happen.
The hard attributes of the Hardware are directly coupled with the manufacturing process.
Current/Traditional Manufacturing Process :
The basic principle of traditional manufacturing is to produce a given number of units within a period. It also focuses on keeping an inventory for unexpected shortages. Traditional manufacturing typically works around the reduction of unit cost by producing larger quantities.
Hassle for Companies
- Lack of Transparency — “It takes up a lot of effort and micromanagement to sort out the entire procurement process of different manufacturing parts. This is why large companies have a big sourcing fee for components since they spend a lot of time and resources managing their inventory with their suppliers. “You continuously have to be on calls and emails to get updates. Nothing is streamlined, and there’s very little transparency,”
- Startups have little say in the process — “The end-user is usually in the backseat, after initial quoting of price and payments. The customer is not in the picture. A customer has minimal involvement after the initial stages. This leaves a massive gap between the manufacturer and its end-user . On-demand manufacturing is gaining adoption( is a method of producing goods only when needed and only in the amounts required). On-demand manufacturing model gives companies more production flexibility and removes the costs that come with housing inventory.”
In this light, Frigate will help in
- Faster Quoting
- Early Market Testing
- Better Product Inventory Management
- Quicker Lead Times
- Reduced Supply chain Overhead
- Improved Cash Flow
Market
- The global Manufacturing Market is valued at $10 Trillion, growing at 3.1% YoY.
- The manufacturing sector of India has the potential to reach US$ 1 trillion by 2025.
- Tailwinds from Government initiatives (With a clear focus on making India a Manufacturing Hub)
- Under the PLI scheme, the government plans to create global manufacturing champions across 13 sectors and has allocated ~Rs. 1.97 lakh crore (US$ 27.13 billion) over the next five years (starting FY22).
- In FY21, there were 39,539 new business registrations in the manufacturing sector, a 50% increase from 26,406 in FY20.
- Electronics, vehicle, and solar panel production account for around 80% of total manufacturing expenditure, with the semiconductors/electronics value chain accounting for 50% of total expenditure in February 2022.
Summary
💡 We are of the opinion that manufacturing companies are currently experiencing a transformative moment akin to the AWS (Amazon Web Services) revolution. Just as IT infrastructure transitioned to cloud-based solutions in the 2000s, a similar scale of adoption is anticipated for the manufacturing sector. Moreover, this trend is further fueled by the swift digitization of the B2B supply chain in India, along with the implementation of the China + 1 strategy, which is expected to contribute significantly to the adoption curve.
