Sarla Aviation started a year ago with a pitch built for India’s busy roads. The electric air taxi startup, named after India’s first female pilot, Sarla Thukralit would focus on aircraft that can carry more weight — even if that means shorter ranges.
“In India, a shorter range is good as long as you can offer it at an attractive price. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve with this higher payload,” said Adrian Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Sarla Aviation, in an interview.
It is a pitch that has landed with investors. The startup said Tuesday it raised $10 million in a new round of funding led by Accel. The all-equity Series A1 round included angel investors such as Binny Bansal (co-founder of Flipkart), Nikhil Kamath (co-founder of Zerodha) and Sriharsha Majety (co-founder of Swiggy). The startup previously raised a seed round of about $1.7 million led by Accel and included participation from angels including Tata Motors CTO Rajendra Petkar.
Sarla Aviation plans to use the funds to build an R&D center in Bangalore, scale its team three or four times from its current strength of 30, and create new prototypes to get better data and validate it.
Unlike most flying taxi concepts that have a capacity of two to four passengers, the Bengaluru-based startup is considering a vehicle that carries six passengers and a pilot weighing up to 680 kilograms (1,500 pounds). Increasing the payload reduces the range to 160 kilometers (99 miles) per battery charge. In contrast, a typical flying taxi concept offers a range of between 120 and 160 miles.
Schmidt, a German national, co-founded Sarla Aviation in January 2024 with longtime colleague Rakesh Gaonkar and software engineer Shivam Chauhan after spending more than two years at Lilium. The Munich-based company had been building regional electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for more than a decade, but after raising more than $1 billion and going public, it shut down last year only to be resurrected shortly after by a consortium of investors . Schmidt also initially worked at automakers including Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen before joining Lilium in 2020.
In mid-2023, Schmidt and Gaonkar left Germany and came to Bengaluru to set up Sarla Aviation after seeing India as a potential market for their flying taxi business. Chauhan, who returned to India after spending time in the US, joined them and the trio incorporated the startup in January 2024.
Schmidt told TechCrunch that India’s geopolitical location, which he believes would “play a significant role in how the power dynamics change,” convinced him to launch his venture in the country.
The one-year-old startup is set to showcase its first prototype air taxi, called Shunya (zero in Hindi), at an industry event in New Delhi on January 17. The company will begin testing prototypes later this year and plans to launch the first commercial air taxi sometime in 2028.
Schmidt said Sarla Aviation will start its commercial airport transportation operations in Bengaluru, one of the world’s most congested cities, and gradually expand to Mumbai, Delhi and Pune. It also plans to launch a free air ambulance service alongside commercial ride-sharing services in the first phase.
Sarla Aviation’s air taxi fare will be priced similar to the top line of an Uber or Ola cab, which will come down to the fare Indian riders typically pay for an auto-rickshaw over time, the executive claimed.
The startup relies on a third-party supply chain to produce its prototypes. Schmidt, however, told TechCrunch that he aimed to have 80% of the supply chain fully domestic when commercial operations began.
Sarla Aviation will compete with well-funded Archer Aviation, which partnered with InterGlobe Enterprises in 2023, and ePlane, which raised $14 million in November at a $46 million valuation. Both aim to launch flying taxis in India next year.
