New Delhi: EndureAir Systems, a dronetech startup incubated at IIT Kanpur has raised Rs 25 crore from IAN Alpha Fund, along with IAN Angel Fund.
The capital will be used to expand into enterprise markets and advance the development of next-generation high-altitude logistics and aerial robotics platforms, the startup said in a statement.
EndureAir Systems was founded in 2018 by IIT Kanpur’s professor of aerospace engineering Abhishek and his former students Rama Krishna and Chirag Jain. EndureAir’s drones are used for defence as well as for other purposes like surveillance, disaster management, and logistics.
The company works across the entire spectrum of UAS research and development, including novel airframes, autopilots, communication frameworks, monitoring stations, cooperative control, and computer vision algorithms, according to company’s LinkedIn profile.
With a total of nine patents in vertical take-off and landing technology, EndureAir claims to develop both hardware and software entirely in-house. The startup is also co-developing high-altitude logistics drones with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and working with Bhutan’s Druk Holding & Investments Group (DHI) on pilot logistics missions to remote monasteries.
According to EndureAir, its drones under the name Sabal, which can carry up to 20 kg payloads, have been inducted by the Indian Army’s Eastern Command, while its long-endurance UAV Vibhram was used in Telangana’s ‘Medicine from the Sky’ programme to deliver vaccines to remote areas.
The funding from IAN Alpha Fund, a Rs 1,000 crore ($125 million) Category II AIF VC fund, is the second fund of the IAN Group, comes at a time when drone adoption is rapidly picking up in the country on the back of easing of rules and availability of multiple options due to the success of the Centre’s PLI scheme to promote drone manufacturing in the country.
To boost manufacturing of drones and their components in the country, the Union government is also mulling launching another Rs 2,000 crore ($234 million) incentive programme. As a result, investors are lining up to back dronetech startups.
By 2030, the Indian dronetech market is expected to become a $ 13 billion opportunity. Earlier this year, drone startup Raphe mPhibr raised $100 million (around Rs 857 crore) in a funding round led by General Catalyst at a valuation of $900 million.
