The fix has always been the same: buy a shuttle-less loom for the price of a small house. Almost no weaver can. So the looms stay as they are, and so do the families that run them.
RETRO RAPIER™ takes the other route. We are engineering a shuttle-less weaving system that fits the cast-iron frame a mill already owns — rapier weft insertion, closed-loop warp tension, digital pick control and a patented tuck-in device. Keep the frame. Replace everything that limits it.
◈ Patented tuck-in device
◉ Prototype on a working loom
India has more installed power looms than any country on earth. Over 24 lakh of them still pick weft with a flying shuttle — a mechanism that has barely changed since the 1950s. Behind those machines are millions of MSME weavers and family units in rural and semi-urban India.
They are not short of ambition. They are short of an upgrade they can afford.
Central and state governments run subsidy schemes for power loom modernisation. Demand is there. What is missing is the machine itself — a proven, affordable, Indian-made retrofit that turns an existing loom into a modern one. That gap is the whole reason this company exists.
Modernisation schemes are funded and active, but there is no indigenous retrofit platform for them to fund.
Fewer people will run a shuttle loom each year. Automation stops being optional and becomes survival.
They are expensive, hard to service, and designed for looms that are not the ones Indian sheds actually run.
A cast-iron loom frame lasts decades. Melting it down to buy a new one is the least sustainable option on the table.
The frame is the heaviest, most expensive and most carbon-intensive part of a loom — and the part that has not needed to change in seventy years. Leave it in place and the cost of modernisation collapses. That single decision is what we are designing around: a target of roughly one-fourth the cost of a new shuttle-less loom.
Every module below is designed in-house — mechanism, electronics, firmware and enclosure. The images are our own CAD and prototype hardware, and each card carries its honest development stage.
A linear cam either side of the loom drives a rapier gearbox off the existing slay oscillation. The shuttle picking mechanism comes out entirely — and with it the pirn winding process, the noise, and the safety risk of a shuttle in flight.
Servo-driven edge folding that closes the selvedge, so cloth off a shuttle-less machine sells into the same market as shuttle-loom cloth. Settings come from a mobile app, not a spanner. This is our furthest-developed module — built, fitted to a loom and weaving.
An electronic shed-forming frame with minimal alignment and opening setup, driven from the same app. Designed to hold the intricate designs a mechanical dobby cannot, and to change pattern without stripping the loom.
A servo drive, universal beam holder and load cell holding warp tension constant from a full beam to an empty one. Critically, it is designed to accept the weaver's existing warp beam unmodified — no beam alteration, no new stock.
Replaces the 5- and 7-wheel take-up motion. Pick density is typed into a phone instead of set with a gear change, and cramming action is configurable per design — so a shed can switch construction between orders in minutes.
Custom industrial electronics with a touch HMI, production logging and remote monitoring. A shed owner stops guessing at efficiency and starts reading it, loom by loom, from a phone.
RETRO RAPIER™ is a product under development, not a catalogue item. One module is patented and has run on a working loom. The others are at design or prototype stage, and design-for-manufacture is moving in parallel. We would rather tell you that than have you find out later.
| Subsystem | IP status | Engineering stage | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic Tuck-In Device | Patent 497044 granted | Prototype trialled on a working loom · DFM in progress | |
| IIoT Smart Loom Controller | Application filed | Hardware prototype in bench testing | |
| Linear Cam Rapier Drive | Application filed | Design complete · prototype on test rig | |
| Universal Electronic Let-Off | Application filed | Detailed design · prototype build next | |
| Universal Electronic Take-Up | Application filed | Detailed design · prototype build next | |
| Hybrid Electronic Shed Forming | Application filed | Detailed design | |
| Integrated machine (all six) | — | System integration not yet started |
Prototype iteration, tolerance and material work, supplier qualification and cost-down on the tuck-in device.
Production drawings, jigs and fixtures, a pilot batch, and field trials with weaving partners.
Own assembly line, quality systems, and a spare-parts chain a weaver can actually reach.
Dealer and service network through Tamil Nadu and the other major weaving states.
Not renders. Real hardware from our own bench, and from the looms where the tuck-in device has been trialled.
This is the target: six subsystems fitted to a frame that has already worked for thirty years, coordinated by one controller. It exists today as a complete CAD assembly. The modules inside it are at the stages listed above.
Reusing the cast frame removes the single most expensive item in loom manufacturing — the reason the price gap is so wide.
Closed-loop warp tension, digital pick density and a closed selvedge hold construction steady across the full beam.
No flying shuttle. Noise drops, the accident risk drops, and the job stops driving skilled weavers away.
Reusing the frame avoids re-casting the heaviest component of the machine — circular manufacturing, not a slogan.
Retro Wovens did not start in a lab. It started with a teenager taking apart broken electronics in a loom town, and it has been the same person's problem ever since.
Finishes school in Udumalpet and joins an electronics repair shop as a teenager.
Diploma and B.Tech in Textile Technology. Mechanical design and embedded electronics learned largely by self-study, alongside.
Special-purpose machines and control systems for Coimbatore industry, including work for Robert Bosch.
A rapier conversion with an electronic tuck-in device is fitted to a working loom — the origin of everything on this page.
Company incorporated in January 2024 with Mathumathi Ramasamy. Indian Patent No. 497044 granted. DPIIT recognition, MSME registration and grant-supported R&D follow.
Retro Wovens Private Limited was incorporated on 12 January 2024 in Tamil Nadu. We design our own weaving machinery and electronic loom control products under the RETRO RAPIER™ brand. Mechanical design, PCB design, embedded firmware, prototype assembly and testing all happen in-house.
We are a product company at development stage. Every subsystem was designed here, and all six are the subject of our own patent filings — one granted, five pending. Our next milestone is manufacturing readiness, not a longer catalogue.
Founder & Managing Director
B.Tech in Textile Technology, with over a decade in weaving machinery R&D. Works across mechanical design, mixed-signal and industrial embedded hardware, motor control and power electronics. Inventor on Indian Patent No. 497044.
If you run a weaving shed and would host a field trial, we want to hear from you. We also answer technical questions from mills, machining suppliers and investors. Tell us your loom make, reed width and the fabric you run.