[Funding alert] ideaForge raises $20 mn led by Florintree

ideaForge, a Drone manufacturer startup has raised $20 million in its series B funding round from Florintree, which is operated by Matthew Cyriac, former private equity co-head of Blackstone India.

Existing investors Celesta Capital, a prominent deep tech investment fund, Infosys, Qualcomm, Infina, along with the Exim Bank of India also participated in this round.

The Mumbai-based ideaForge was founded in 2007 by Ankit Mehta, Ashish Bhat, Rahul Singh, and Vipul Joshi, It is backed by over 15 years of research and development (R&D) with over 20 global patents.

The startup dominates the Indian market, with its drones being deployed by the defense sector, homeland security and enterprise clients.

“ideaForge is very happy to be associated with Florintree, which has a proven track record of helping organizations unlock enterprise value”, said, Ankit Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, ideaForge.

“ideaForge has grown 10X in the last two years and we will use this funding to invest in R&D, international expansion, and building a world-class team. We want to continue to create high performance, reliable, and autonomous drones that inspire the adoption of this technology”, he added.

The company claims to have frequent contracts with the Indian Army for its Switch UAVs and its other customers including the Indian Navy, Air Force, State Police Forces, BSF, NSG, CRPF, Adani, L&T, IndianOil, Survey of India, Indian Railways, etc.

“Florintree has been tracking the drone sector closely for the last two years and ideaForge is one of the few globally competitive full stack players in the sector with scale and profitability. The strong order book built by the company is a testament to the R&D work done by the team over the last 15 years and they are primed to grow exponentially.While the industry has proliferated in the last few years on the back of government policy, we expect ideaForge with its focus on building indigenous hardware within house software subsystems to gain an outsized market share in a rapidly growing industry”, said, Mathew Cyriac, Executive Chairman, Florintree Advisors.

According to the government, the drone services industry is expected to grow to over Rs 30,000 crore in the next three years and generate over five lakh jobs.

About ideaForge

ideaForge is a pioneer in the research, development, production and operation of compact, cost-effective, and user-friendly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in India. They believe in their motto to CREATE technically superior UAVs for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and to INSPIRE the world by leading the surge of technological advancements in the field of Unmanned Systems.

Their determination on designing sustainable and efficient products has presented us with an opportunity to become market leaders in their area of expertise. ideaForge was founded by IIT Bombay alumni in 2007. It was earlier incubated at SINE IIT Bombay and CIIE, Ahmedabad. It is driven by highly motivated professionals from various fields and backgrounds such as aerospace, electronics, and mechanical engineering.

They are able to identify and share common aspirations and goals with each other which benefit the company, its employees, and society as a whole. Their willingness to learn and implement new philosophies of business practices in their company certainly provides us an edge over their global competitors. They believe in creating a better world for mankind using the modern technological advancements in the Aerospace and Robotics Industry.