Sarla Aviation, an ambitious tech venture that aims to introduce (and make common) electric flying taxis for public transportation in India, has announced a new $10Mn Series ‘A1’ round from Accel. The round was co-led by billionaire co-founder of Zerodha, Nikhil Kamath. This Series A1 round also saw participation from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and recently IPOed Swiggy founder Sriharsha Majety.
Sarla Aviation, named after India’s first woman pilot Sarla Thukral, had previously raised a seed round of $1.7Mn, also led by Accel. That round included participation from several angels, including Tata Motors CTO Rajendra Petkar.
Recent transportation reports have suggested, that India has the unfortunate distinction of having three of the top 5 most congested cities in the world. As India’s economy sees rapid expansion, so has expanded the number of vehicles on Indian roads. Public infrastructure though, has barely kept up, with many of country’s top metropolises struggling to keep traffic moving. Public transport too, is good in patches, with the exception of capital city of Delhi, as local governments struggle to cope up with the aggressively rising needs for a more robust public transport system.
Sarla Aviation is looking to bypass those congested streets, with its electric flying taxis, a first and rather novel tech innovation for India’s public transportation landscape. “In India, a shorter range is fine, as long as you can offer it at an attractive price point. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve with this higher payload,” said Adrian Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Sarla Aviation, in an interview.
With the recently raised $10Mn, Sarla Aviation will spend more on R&D, team expansion to a headcount that is 3-4 times of what its today, and try to validate newer prototypes. A real, usable and publicly available electric flying taxi might still be some time away.
Co-founded by Adrian Schmidt (a German citizen), Rakesh Gaonkar and Shivam Chauhan, the company aims to showcase its first prototype named ‘Shunya’ (Hindi for ‘Zero’) at an event in New Delhi on January 17.
Schmidt says Sarla Aviation is expecting to start commercial operations for airport transfers in Bengaluru soon, and gradually roll into Mumbai, Delhi, and Pune. It also plans to launch a free air ambulance service parallel to commercial ride-sharing services in its first phase.
The startup is planning to price its air taxi ticket in parallel to the top price of an Uber or Ola cab in the country. They gradually expect the price to come down to the fare Indian riders typically pay for an auto-rickshaw over time.