General Aeronautics Raises INR 65 Mn In Pre-Series A Round From Mela Ventures The funds will be used to expand its go-to-market programs, continue to invest in the areas of high reliability and efficient spraying, operational support including training drone pilots
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-specialist General Aeronautics (GA) for precision agriculture, on Wednesday announced an INR-65 million pre-Series A financing round led by Mela Ventures.
With the investment, GA will expand its go-to-market programs and will continue to invest in the areas of high reliability and efficient spraying, operational support including training drone pilots.
"Future food security has become a major global concern and hence there is a movement towards making agriculture more sustainable with lesser use of harmful chemicals by making the input delivery process more efficient and precise," said Abhishek Burman, chief executive officer, and co-founder, General Aeronautics.
GA was started by India's acclaimed aircraft designer and Padma Sri awardee Dr. Kota Harinarayana and Abhishek Burman along with Dr. Anutosh Moitra and Air Cmde P.K. Choudhary to bring the best of the aircraft design practices to the field of UAV systems and provide efficient, reliable, and cost-effective drone systems to address agricultural and other societal needs.
"Many countries have moved to aerial spraying practices which are highly efficient and also reduce the hazardous impact of manual spraying. GA is at the forefront of drone-based agriculture technologies and has indigenously developed and validated a world-class solution to improve input application efficiency multi-fold. GA believes that agriculture in many countries including India, is ready to use such cost-effective technologies to improve the yield - which will benefit the farmers and humanity at large," Burman added.
Incubated at the Society for Innovation and Development (SID), the Entrepreneurship Cell of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, GA has developed an indigenous drone solution along with a unique spray capability with a potential to improve spray efficiency multi-folds, the platform said.
The solution provides best-in-class spray reach and uniformity with unmatched droplets and flow-control. This combined with high reliability and indigenous manufacturing results in highly efficient and cost-effective solutions - removing the drudgery and inefficiencies of manual spraying.
