Manufacturing AI startup Frinks AI raises $5.4 million, ropes in former TCS CEO Ramadorai as advisor

Frinks AI cofounder Aditya Agrawal, Dharmgya Sharma, and Subhra Bhattacherjee.

Deep-tech manufacturing startup Frinks AI has raised $5.4 million in a Pre-Series A round, led by Prime Venture Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $6.25 million.

Founded by IIT Hyderabad alumni, Frinks AI is building next-generation Vision Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to help manufacturers automate and improve quality control on their production lines.

The funding round also saw participation from existing investor Chiratae Ventures, along with Navam Capital and Ashok Atluri, Founder of Zen Technologies, the startup said in a release.

Frinks AI is also backed by prominent industry leaders including former Tata Consultancy Services MD & CEO S Ramadorai, former Executive Director of Tata Motors V Sumantran, Professor of Imperial College of London Tarun Ramadorai, and former Group CTO of Tata Sons Gopichand Katragadda.

Frinks AI - founded by Aditya Agrawal, Dharmgya Sharma, and Subhra S Bhattacherjee – is developing foundational vision models, highly generalisable AI systems for visual inspection and quality control in manufacturing.

These foundational models are designed to overcome long-standing reliability and generalisation challenges in the industrial machine domain by offering superior intelligence and greater adaptability.

“With ongoing supply chain disruptions and rising global trade tensions, we’re seeing a strong push toward localised manufacturing as countries prioritise internal consumption,” Aditya Agrawal, CEO and Co-founder of Frinks AI said in the release.

The Vision AI platform is already being used by manufacturers across the automobile, consumer goods, building materials, and medical devices sectors. The company said customers have reported measurable improvements in product quality, fewer defects, and major efficiency gains on the factory floor.

With the latest funding, Frinks AI aims to scale its platform across global markets, invest aggressively in R&D, and expand its presence in the US, which is a key market for such technologies.

Visual inspection in manufacturing has been around for 50 years, but owing to a rule-based approach, its applicability has been limited to less than 15 percent of scenarios typical on the assembly line. Frinks has developed manufacturing-specific machine vision models by combining foundational models with in-house fine-tuning using a small set of images.

This translates to a 99.99 percent accuracy, powered by five years of deep research, and foundational vision models automating the cognitive layer of manufacturing, starting with visual inspection and quality control.