Vision AI Startup SwitchOn Bags Funding To Help Companies Reduce Manufacturing Defects

Vision AI startup SwitchOn has raised $4.2 Mn in a Series-A funding round from Axilor Ventures and pi Ventures. Prominent angel investors including Anuj Bihani, Laxmi Narayan, others have also participated in the Series-A round. 

With the fresh capital, the startup plans to scale internationally, make key hires in sales and technology, and invest in research and development.

Founded in 2017 by Aniruddha Banerjee and Avra Banerjee, SwitchOn was launched with the vision of eliminating defects in manufacturing. It helps precision manufacturing industries reduce their manufacturing defects through the use of a field-trainable AI system. As per the startup, some of the global manufacturers such as SKF, ITC, Unilever, are using SwitchOn’s platform.

 SwitchOn claims its AI system DeepInspect helps manufacturers identify complex surface defects quickly and achieve superhuman accuracy of more than 99%. DeepInspect’s quick setup uses less than 200 good images to train AI models and enables manufacturers to adopt and completely automate their quality inspection and deploy hundreds of SKUs within days, said the startup.

“We believe that we have stabilised AI to the point where single-day trials and single-week deployments are finally a reality,” Aniruddha Banerjee, cofounder of SwitchOn, said.

“With this funding, we plan to expand our technology and R&D teams and focus on unlocking never-before-solved use cases in manufacturing,” Avra Banerjee, cofounder of SwitchOn, added.

Back in 2019, SwitchOn raised a $1 Mn seed funding round led by pi Ventures. Axilor and some angel investors from The Chennai Angels also participated in this funding round.

Thanks to the growing adoption of AI across various industries, AI-focussed startups have grabbed investors’ attention. In January this year, AI startup Mad Street Den raised $30 Mn, while another startup Entropik secured $25 Mn in February 2023. 

According to an IMARC report, the country’s AI market was pegged at $680.1 Mn in 2022. The industry is expected to become a $3,935.5 Mn space by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 33.28%.