Skylark Drones Raises $3 Million In Pre-Series A Funding Round The company will primarily use the new funding to enhance the actionable insights from drone data that it provides, in order to aid and simplify superior business decisions and strategies for its clients

Drone platform company Skylark Drones announced on Monday that it has secured $3 million in a pre-series A funding round to strengthen its product offerings and fuel international expansion. The funding round was co-led by investors InfoEdge Ventures and IAN Fund with participation from AdvantEdge founders, Fowler Westrup, Redstart Labs, IKP, and Vimson group. This follows the company's previous Seed funding round, which took place in 2018.

The startup has offices in the USA and India, aims to elevate worksite productivity and safety by providing geospatial intelligence to different enterprises in sectors such as mining, solar power, real estate, agriculture, and inspection. It provides its clients with the ability to use AI-powered technology products such as Spectra and Drone Mission Ops.

"Our vision is to unlock the economic potential of aerial intelligence," said Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy, chief executive officer, and co-founder, Skylark Drones. "We thank the lead investors of this round and believe the participation of Fowler Westrup, a leading agriculture solutions company, and Vimson Group mining conglomerate will help further strengthen the sector focussed solutions we offer our customers."

The company offers end-to-end solutions with Spectra enabling worksite intelligence and several platform integrations and API access. Drone Mission Ops enables project and fleet management for large enterprises and individual operators to effectively plan and execute drone missions. It also offers Dronepass, a device to enable drone manufacturers to comply with local airspace regulations. These solutions allow customers to tap into the advantages of drone data analytics and use it to plan better, construct faster, and operate in a safer way.

"Aerial intelligence is a theme that has immense potential as it provides significant cost, time, and accuracy benefits for large infrastructure companies which face frequent cost and time overruns. Skylark has built an indigenous platform that facilitates quick mobilization of independent drone pilots, enabling them to run drone missions to gather aerial images of large worksites. Skylark's computer vision software analyses this aerial imagery to offer industry-specific insights for its mining, solar and construction clients. Being amongst a limited set of players who have a full-stack offering, we believe that the opportunity for the company is global," shared Amit Behl, partner, InfoEdge Venture Fund.

The company will primarily use the new funding to enhance the actionable insights from drone data that it provides, in order to aid and simplify superior business decisions and strategies for its clients. The investment will also be used to spur international product expansion and development of its drone data analytics products.

"The global drone software market size is projected to reach $9,961.6 million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 25.05 per cent between 2020 and 2027. With the rising adoption of advanced technologies such as AI and ML, Skylark Drones' solutions can unlock potential while increasing productivity and ensuring the safety of work sites. What impressed us most was a strong and unique business model – one that is easily scalable in India and beyond. We are delighted to make this contribution and hope the company marks its presence globally," commented Rajnish Kapur, managing partner, IAN Fund.

"Drones are becoming the norm for remote worksite monitoring and inspections, and we have seen rapid adoption from marquee enterprises like Tata Steel, Ultratech Cement, Softbank Energy over the past few years. We look forward to serving more enterprises in the next leg of our growth story," stated Mrinal Pai, co-founder, Skylark Drones.

"The Skylark team led by Mughilan and Mrinal is one of the best teams out there with global aspirations to build deep tech solutions and services for a full-stack array of drone applications. We have been impressed by the technology stack built by the team and the strong execution demonstrated while working with the country's top conglomerates. We are delighted to participate in this round to partner with them to build in India for the world," added Kunal Khattar, managing partner, AdvantEdge Founders.