Fabheads raises $10M in Series A led by Accel
The funding will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, grow the leadership team, and strengthen client-facing engineering and R&D functions.
Fabheads, a deeptech startup focused on automating composite materials manufacturing, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel, with additional participation from Trifecta Capital. This brings the total capital raised by the company to $13 million, including its earlier seed and pre-seed rounds.
The new capital will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, grow the leadership team, and strengthen client-facing engineering and R&D functions, the company said in a statement.
Founded in 2015 by former ISRO engineers Dhinesh Kanagaraj and Abhijeet Rathore, Fabheads has developed proprietary automation systems for the complex and largely manual process of manufacturing with carbon fiber and other advanced composites.
“Having experienced the limitations of manual composite manufacturing firsthand during our time at ISRO, we knew an innovative disruption was necessary—not incremental,” said Dhinesh Kanagaraj, Co-founder and CEO at Fabheads. “We’re not just automating a process—we’re redefining how high-performance parts using advanced materials can be made faster, better, and more affordably.”
Fabheads is among only seven companies worldwide to have successfully developed and commercially deployed automated solutions for fiber-based material manufacturing—a sector still heavily reliant on labor-intensive, hand-laying techniques. These traditional methods often lead to high material wastage, extended lead times, and significant human error. Fabheads’ robotic systems address these inefficiencies by automating key processes such as fiber placement and layering.
The company claims its technology can reduce production costs by up to 50%, cut material wastage by 20%, and accelerate production cycles by 30%.
“Unlike more mature manufacturing sectors, the technology ecosystem for carbon fiber composites remains relatively underdeveloped,” said Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel. “Fabheads has built proprietary tech that competes with the best in the world in a space dominated by a few global players. With demand for composites rising across aerospace, defense, mobility, and clean energy, we believe Fabheads is solving a critical bottleneck.”
The funding comes at a time when India’s composite materials industry is undergoing a shift. Government-backed initiatives like the National Technical Textiles Mission and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes are pushing for domestic manufacturing of advanced materials—including carbon fiber production, expected to begin by 2025–26.
To support growing demand, Fabheads will set up a larger manufacturing facility in Bengaluru. The facility will primarily serve the aerospace sector—one of the most demanding use cases for composites—while also scaling up to cater to international clients.
Edited by Megha Reddy