Skies Without Limits: The ePlane Company’s Bold Flight

The Spark: Urban Mobility Reinvented

Cities across the world struggle with congestion, long commutes and carbon emissions. Satya Chakravarthy, a long-time aerospace professor at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), and his former student Pranjal Mehta saw a deceptively simple yet powerful question: What if commuting could be taken to the skies—at nearly ground-vehicle-cost and ten times the speed?

Chakravarthy’s research in propulsion, aircraft design and urban air mobility intersected with Mehta’s ambition to spin deep-tech into real-world mobility. Their answer became the ePlane Company: an endeavour to build one of the world’s most compact electric, vertical-take-off-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft for passengers and/or cargo—starting with intra-city operations.

Founders & Their Roles

• Satya Chakravarthy (Co-Founder & CEO/CTO) — A professor of aerospace engineering at IIT-M, he holds (per sources) a PhD in aerospace engineering, and led propulsion research such as the National Centre for Combustion. At ePlane he drives the technical vision, product architecture, and certification strategy of the aircraft.

• Pranjal Mehta (Co-Founder & CEO/COO) — A former student of Chakravarthy, Mehta helped transition the academic insight into startup execution, founding the business side of ePlane. He focused on product-market fit, finance, fundraising and manufacturing strategy.

Together their combination of academic depth + youthful startup drive and engineering + business makes for a powerful founding team.

Early Journey: From Idea to Prototype

The ePlane Company was incorporated as a public company in 2019 at IIT-M's National Centre for Combustion Research & Development (NCCRD) in Chennai.

Their first challenge: develop a compact, efficient eVTOL aircraft that could take off vertically (or near-vertically), land in constrained urban spaces (e.g., building rooftops), and fly at a range/velocity meaningful for intra-city trips. According to Forbes India, their first aircraft, the “e200,” was projected as a two-seater, 200 kg (or 600 kg depending on spec) and maybe 200 km range per charge.

In early reports they announced they had built and flown a scaled-down unmanned prototype and aimed for full-scale by 2024.

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Product & Market: What They’re Building

ePlane aims to offer:

• A hybrid wing+rotor design (rotors for vertical take-off, wings for efficient forward flight) to maximise efficiency and minimise footprint.

• Capabilities: 10X faster commute in city conditions compared to road, with cost comparable or modestly higher than taxis.

• Use-cases: passenger air-taxi, cargo transport (especially last-mile deliveries, remote/ rural zones) and potentially air ambulance.

• Business model: They plan to make it as infrastructure-light as possible (landing on rooftops or parking decks rather than dedicated airports) to scale economically and penetrate urban markets.

Funding & Milestones

• In March 2021, they raised ≈ USD 1 million seed funding led by Speciale Invest + Naval Ravikant and others.

• In January 2022, they raised USD 5 million in a pre-Series A round, led by Speciale Invest, Micelio, with participation from 3one4 Capital, UTEC, InfoEdge, FirstCheque.vc and others.

• They have built prototypes, and their roadmap projected a cargo version possibly by 2023 and passenger version by 2024 (though these dates may shift).
  
  

Challenges & Turning Points

Bringing such a radical mobility concept to life entails many hurdles:

• Certification & regulation: Aviation authorities (in India and globally) have stringent safety regulations. ePlane achieved a design organisation approval (DOA) from India’s regulator, enabling it to build aircraft that can be recognised as certified.

• Technology & manufacturing risk: Aviation hardware demands high reliability, low weight, robust batteries, efficient aerodynamics and safety—all more difficult than many assume. ePlane’s wing-rotor hybrid design is technically ambitious.

• Market acceptance & cost: They have to demonstrate cost comparable to taxis for intra-city trips, convince customers of safety, and build landing/operations infrastructure. ePlane claims cost about 1.5× a regular taxi fare for 10× speed.

• Capital intensity & scaling: Deep-tech aviation ventures require significant funds, long development cycles, manufacturing partnerships, supply chain, and operational logistics.

• Infrastructure & ecosystem: Even if aircraft exist, landing zones, air-traffic-management for urban low-altitude flight, charging infrastructure must catch up. Chakravarthy acknowledges that landings will need to be treated like helipads and path planning is required.
  
  

Why Their Story Matters

• It’s a compelling example of deep-tech startup emergence from India, moving into the global eVTOL/urban air mobility race.

• The founding team is anchored in strong technical credentials + mission-driven ambition rather than purely consumer-app entrepreneurship.

• They are tackling one of the biggest urban mobility challenges—faster, cleaner, less traffic-dependent transport—beyond ground EVs.

• Their hybrid design (rotor+wing) demonstrates engineering optimisation and reflects innovation rather than simply copying others.

• Their timeline, funding traction and regulatory progress show that deep-tech aviation is not purely theoretical but can advance from campus labs to venture stage.
  
  

The Road Ahead & Vision

Looking forward, ePlane aims to:

• Launch their first full-scale two-seat passenger eVTOL (e200) passenger model and cargo models in next 1-2 years (depending on regulatory and manufacturing progress).

• Expand the aircraft line: cargo variants (e6, e50) with different payloads and capacities.

• Build commercial operations: urban air-taxi services, rooftop/parking-deck landings, last-mile cargo delivery—especially in emerging markets with infrastructure constraints.

• Raise larger funding rounds (Series A, B) to scale manufacturing, supply-chain, certification, global markets.

• Expand globally: beyond India, partner with OEMs, cities, aviation authorities internationally.

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Ensure they deliver economic viability: scale cost down, ensure safety, reliability, regulatory compliance and market adoption.

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