Ethereal Machines Pvt. Ltd, a deep-tech startup focused on the manufacturing industry, has raised $1 million (about Rs 7 crore) in its pre-Series A round of funding.
Early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures led the funding round, Ethereal Machines said in a statement.
PayU India managing director Jitendra Gupta as well as Grey Orange Robotics founders Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta also invested in the startup in their personal capacities.
The Bengaluru-based company said it will use the funds to expand its sales and distribution network in the domestic and international markets, spruce up its product portfolio and build relations with application partners.
Ethereal Machines was founded by Kaushik Mudda and Navin Jain. It makes 3D printers and 5-Axis computer numerical control machines that help machines move a part or cutting tool along five different axes simultaneously for greater precision. Its flagship product is Ethereal Halo, which combines the technologies of subtractive and additive manufacturing into one bundle to replicate the capabilities of a large factory on a desktop scale.
The startup makes its machines locally and says the machines are priced at roughly a third of those made by its contemporaries. Its customers come from various sectors including aerospace, tool and die, healthcare, jewellery, automobile, electronics and education.
Ethereal founders Mudda, who is the CEO, and Jain, the CTO, are graduates of RV College of Engineering, Bangalore.
"It is difficult to believe they (Mudda and Jain) have been at it for more than five years, a fact perhaps only underscoring the challenge at hand," said Arpit Agarwal, principal at Blume Ventures. "Their passion for building a best-in-class machine tools maker out of India is the primary reason we chose to invest in Ethereal," he added.
Blume Ventures
The homegrown venture capital firm was founded in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath. It is looking at a final close of its third fund, after making the first close at $40 million in October last year.
It had plans to invest 35-40% of its new fund in segments such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, analytics, software-as-a-service, blockchain, security, robotics and Internet of Things.
Overall, the VC firm has invested in more than 100 startups including online learning platform Unacademy, robotics firm GreyOrange, video creation platform Rocketium.com, clinical research and data analytics startup THB and diabetes management app BeatO. It has exited a number of companies including TaxiforSure, which was acquired by Ola, and Zipdial, which was bought by Twitter.
In March, it led an investment round in Jai Kisan, a lending platform for farmers.