Drone manufacturer seeks US$10M

India’s Sree Sai Aerotech Innovations Pvt Ltd (SSAI), also known as ZUPPA, plans to raise US$10 million to scale up its existing Drone products and develop newer applications for market demand.

The initial investment round of US$1 million in Zuppa was led by the IndiaNivesh Special Situations & Growth Fund – a Mumbai-based Venture Capital Fund, along with MapMyIndia – a pioneer of digital maps in India that offers comprehensive GPS navigation and tracking solutions.

The IndiaNivesh Special Situations & Growth Fund identifies home-grown, deep-tech companies and supports them right from the early stage. They also provide growth funding to the companies which focus on niche sectors and have a high growth potential.

Zuppa, being the only fully integrated ‘Made in India’ embedded hardware manufacturer from design to product, is uniquely positioned to serve regulated Drone and Vehicle Telematics sectors.

The company has a proprietary embedded electronic technology and is one among the select group of AIS 140 approved Vehicle Telematics Systems.

With the recent initiatives by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on commercial civilian drone regulation, the horizon of drones and drone-adapted technologies are expected to widen in India.

This opens up a vast opportunity for Zuppa, which is poised to play a key role in this transformation through its embedded technology. Also, Zuppa’s AIS 140 compliant (as mandated by MORTH) Vehicle Tracking System is ready to transform the monitoring of 2 crore commercial vehicles across India.

Elaborating on the company’s growth plans, Sai Pattabiram, Founder and Managing Director of Zuppa, said: “The next round of funding will be utilized towards the expansion of business from our existing products. We will retain our focus on business relating to vehicle telematics, large-area mapping drones and high precision GPS devices.”

The unique technological capabilities of Zuppa have already been recognized by John Deere, TAFE, Mahindra and MapMyIndia– a few from its growing customer base.

Zuppa’s innovations have also been recognized under the ‘Innovation voucher program’ of TFSC (TANSTIA – FNF Germany). The organization has also been funded by the Department of Science and Technology under the TIFAC-SIDBI Srijan Fund after a stringent evaluation process of the technical competency of the company and its product ‘Zuppa Autopilot’ which was conducted by domain experts from DRDO, IITs, IISC and industry experts as well.

SSAI was founded in the year 2008, by a father-son duo, Sai Pattabiram and Venkatesh Sai.

SSAI has successfully developed various applications by adapting its’ proprietary cutting-edge technology including:
GPS land Levellers;
Vehicle Tracking & Telematics Systems (VTS);
Industrial IoT and data transmission Solution;
Low-cost Genset Automation System for remote operation of Diesel Gensets.

-/fiinews.com