IIT Madras-incubated startup ePlane Company which is working on electric planes for door-to-door commute in cities said that it has raised an undisclosed round of financing in seed funding. The investment is led by Speciale Invest and has participation from IIM Ahmedabad's CIIE.CO, FirstCheque, JavaCapital and Sharechat co-founder Farid Ahsan.
The company said that the fresh round of financing will be used to augment building critical infrastructure and an engineering team to develop IP and bring early product demonstrations by 2021.
“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,” said Professor Satya Chakravarthy, Co-founder and CTO, The ePlane Company.
Adding to it, Pranjal Mehta, Co-founder, and CEO, The ePlane Company, said, “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.”
Launched in 2019 to focus on both cargo and passenger transportation, the startup is incubated at IIT Madras Incubation Cell and operates from the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development, IITM.
“Our experience of working in transportation across previous investments in Ultraviolette and Vogo led us to better understand the potential ePlane has to build a multi-billion category within cargo and passenger transportation,” said Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest.
