Flying Taxi startup ePlane Company raises $5 million

The ePlane Company has raised $5 million in a funding round led by deep-tech venture capitalist Speciale Invest and EV/climate-focused fund Micelio. 

Naval Ravikant, 3one4 Capital, UTEC, Anicut Capital, Infoedge, Prashant Pitti, Thought Ventures, Java Capital and Firstcheque.vc, etc., have also participated in the round.

The ePlane Company, launched in 2019, is the brainchild of Satya Chakravarthy, an aerospace engineering professor, and his student, Pranjal Mehta. The company aims to build a compact flying taxi called the e200 for passengers and cargo transport.

The startup has already test flown the lab-scale prototype of the e200 and will come up with a full-scale prototype in April 2022. 

The Company, in a statement, said, "Our mission is to explore efficient, safer, and carbon-neutral mobility solutions. With ePlane, we want to build electric planes for intra-city transportation and the world's most compact flying taxi, called the e200 for passengers and cargo transport, which would cause less congestion on roads, less pollution and fewer road accidents. The startup claims to have test flown the lab-scale prototype of e200 and said that it is on the way to do a full-scale prototype in April this year.   

Satya Prakash, co-founder, The ePlane Company said, "We have currently tested a scaled-down prototype and expect to have our first cargo plane by early as next year. The cargo carrier will roll out by February 2023, the passenger version is expected by December 2024".

"The USP is that it is a compact flying taxi in the world, which has a hybrid design that uses both rotors and wings and a subscale prototype that enables it to fly slower than e-planes with compact wings would normally require. Further, our product will not have any dedicated infrastructure requirements and can make the city commute ten times faster at just 1.5 times the taxi fare," added Pranjal Mehta, Co-founder, The ePlane Company.