IIT Madras incubated start off-up, The ePlane Company, constructing electric planes for door-to-door commute in cities has raised an undisclosed round of financing in seed funding. The organization was founded in 2017 and totally launched in 2019 by Satya Chakravarthy and Pranjal Mehta to discover a answer for the inefficiencies in each cargo and passenger transportation.
The investment is led by deep-tech VC Speciale Invest and has participation from IIM Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO, FirstCheque, JavaCapital, and Sharechat co-founder Farid Ahsan. The fresh round of financing will enable the organization to augment constructing crucial infrastructure and a globe-class engineering group to create IP and show early item demonstrations by 2021.
Satya Chakravarthy, co-founder and CTO, The ePlane Company, stated: “Electric planes can disrupt aviation over short distances characterising urban aerial mobility. The configuration we are building would enable cost-effective air taxi operations in the future. Progressively, the outlook for this technology to make further forays into the general aviation space look very promising.”
The startup is constructing electric planes which can be utilized for 10X quicker commute inside cities at a equivalent cost to road taxi and can also be utilized for moving cargo in remote and rural regions. ePlane had constructed a modest-scale prototype by bootstrapping, with a committed group of 10 at the moment and is at the moment expanding their group to 25.
Pranjal Mehta, co-founder, and CEO, The ePlane Company, stated: “In urban areas, people spend 1-2 hours every day travelling. Can we reduce it to 10-15 minutes at a similar cost? There is immense societal and economic value in that. It can even make affordable air ambulances a reality. The possibilities are endless.”
“We at Speciale Invest, believe in the founders’ deep-technical insights that are leading them to build a roadmap of electric planes and associated critical infrastructure! Our experience of working in transportation across previous investments in Ultraviolette, Vogo led us to better understand the potential ePlane has to build a multi-billion category within cargo and passenger transportation,” stated Vishesh Rajaram, managing companion, Speciale Invest.