Pune's Tanay Manjrekar becomes first Indian to ride Virgin Hyperloop

Tanay Manjrekar, a native of Pune and Virgin Hyperloop’s Power Electronics Specialist, became the first Indian to travel in a Hyperloop Pod at the DevLoop test facility at Las Vegas in the United States.

“Working on hyperloop – let alone being one of the first to ride it – is truly a dream come true,” said Tanay Manjrekar, Power Electronics Specialist at Virgin Hyperloop. “It is my hope that India sees the tremendous opportunity ahead of it, to once again be an innovation leader and leapfrog the rest of the world, and continues its progress in the Mumbai-Pune hyperloop project.”

Virgin Hyperloop on 9 November had "successfully" completed the first-ever human trial in the hyperloop pod at the DevLoop test facility in America. The Virgin employees journeyed 500 metres in 15 seconds in a two-person pod called ‘Pegasus’ or XP-2, which travelled at 160 km/hour.

The first two passengers were Josh Giegel, co-founder and CTO of Virgin Hyperloop, and Sara Luchian who is head of passenger experience

In nearly a one-minute-long video posted on Twitter, Manjrekar expressed his excitement on the success of this project as he says “this is real” and that “I just rode a Hyperloop”.