Flying taxi startup The ePlane Company raises $5 million

CHENNAI: IIT-Madras incubated 'flying taxi' startup The ePlane Company has raised $5 million in a pre-Series A funding round. This round was led by deep-tech VC firm Speciale Invest and EV/Climate-focused fund Micelio.
A consortium of investors including Naval Ravikant, 3one4 Capital, UTEC (University of Tokyo Edge Capital), Anicut Capital, Infoedge, Prashant Pitti (co-founder of Easemytrip), Thought Ventures, Java Capital, and Firstcheque.vc also participated in the round.
The startup, which is betting on eradicating traffic by building electric planes for short-range intra-city commute, plans to use the funds to hire top-tier talent, advance R&D, and continue to gain airworthiness provision and initiate certification.
“We have currently tested a scaled-down prototype and expect to have our first cargo plane ready as early as next year. The cargo carrier is expected to be rolled out by February 2023, the passenger version is expected by December 2024,” said Satya Chakravarthy, co-founder, The ePlane Company, and IIT-M professor who has been on sabbatical since last year to take up this assignment.
Founded in 2017 and launched in 2019, The ePlane Company is the brainchild of aerospace engineering professor Satya Chakravarthy and his student Pranjal Mehta. The company aspires to build a compact flying taxi e200 for passengers, as well as cargo transport that could help reduce congestion on the roads and emissions from ground transport and lower the risk of road accidents. The startup has already test flown the lab-scale prototype of the e200 and is on course to do a full-scale prototype in April 2022.