Electric Plane Manufacturer The ePlane Company Raises Undisclosed Fund Led By Speciale Invest The fresh funds will be utilized to advance its infrastructure and set up engineering team
By Debarghya Sil •
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
IIT-Madras incubated start-up The ePlane Company on Thursday announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of fund in a seed round from deep-tech VC Speciale Invest. IIM Ahmedabad's CIIE.CO, FirstCheque, JavaCapital and Sharechat co-founder Farid Ahsan also participated in the round.
The fresh capital injected will be utilised to advance its infrastructure and set up an engineering team to develop IP and show early product demonstrations by 2021.
Founded in 2017 and launched in 2019 by Prof. Satya Chakravarthy and Pranjal Mehta, the startup is building electric planes for door-to-door commuting in cities.
The startup claims that electric planes will provide 10 times faster commute within cities at a similar price to road taxi and also be used for moving cargo in remote and rural areas. The company has till date built a small-scale prototype by bootstrapping, with the help of a dedicated ten-member team.
Speaking on electric planes, Chakravarthy, co-founder and chief technology officer of The ePlane Company, said, "Electric planes can really 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."
Commenting on the future possibilities of electric planes, Mehta, co-founder and chief executive officer of the company, said they can reduce traveling time from 1-2 hours to 15 minutes with the help of electric planes, as this can turn air ambulances into reality.
Speaking on the investment, Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner, Speciale Invest, said, "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."
