The ePlane Company's flying taxis are all set to take to the skies

Firm aims to bring out its first prototype by June, and then get the airworthiness certificate. Once flown, it could become Asia's first air-taxi OEM to have successfully test-driven its aircraft

On December 2021, California-based Archer Aviation announced that its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air-taxi's prototype had its first successful hover test. At the same time, a housewife in Chennai still had doubts regarding the flying taxi start-up founded in 2017 by her husband Professor Satya Chakravarthy and his student, taking a leave from his IIT Madras teaching job.

A few days later, she got the keys to a truck that aerospace engineer Chakravarthy and his partner Pranjal Mehta bought for loading a plane and doing an internal test on speed. It then dawned on her. "You guys are really making planes," she thought. The first hurdle for Chakravarthy and Mehta had to clear was convincing a lot of people who were doubtful about their electric flying taxi venture --  The ePlane Company.

Early this week, the start-up raised $5 million in a pre-Series A round of funding led by Speciale Invest and Micelio and players like Naval Ravikant, 3one4 Capital, UTEC (University of Tokyo Edge Capital), Anicut Capital, Infoedge backed Redstart Labs, Prashant Pitti (Co-founder of Easemytrip), Thought Ventures, Java Capital, and Firstcheque.vc.

The thread of The ePlane Company for the professor and his student came from a speech by silicon valley entrepreneur Tony Seba, who predicted the future of electric vehicles. "I found that most of the start-ups are run by students. I needed a young face to take this forward. I never had the intention to go full time, but I got sucked into it," Chakravarthy said. To give a thrust to their views, the company got their first round of funding in March 2021.

As per the roadmap, the firm is looking to bring out its first prototype by June 2022, after which it will have to get the airworthiness certificate from the government. Once flown, it is likely to become the first air-taxi OEM in Asia to have successfully test-driven its aircraft, joining the elite league of the Western companies such as Joby Aviation, Lilium, Vertical Aerospace, Volocopter and Wisk Aero.

The prototype will be a two-seater flying taxi with 200 kg load capacity and a speed of about 180 km per hour (kmph). The electric aircraft will have both passengers and cargo options. The ePlane Company's roadmap is to act as an original equipment manufacturer like its global peers and have service and manufacturing partnerships with various companies for each country once it gets the necessary clearances.

"For the service partners, to achieve breakeven, we will have to price it at least 1.5-2 times that of an of Ola or Uber and that too at a travel time which is one-tenth of that of a normal taxi. This will be a good and affordable deal for many," Mehta added. For those who think that it may need space and huge infrastructure investment, the company says that its vertical take-off will require a maximum area of 500 square feet if regulators give a clearance for that, which may well be a perfect fit for urban India.

However, concerns regarding the availability of lithium-ion batteries are also attached to this, it may well get a makeover when alternate options like hydrogen get to evolve. Mehta added that by 2025, 'the company is likely to start its commercial service in major cities across the world and by 2030 will become a serious alternative for Ola and Uber, with around a  1,000 taxis in each of these cities.'