Drone manufacturer ideaForge raises $20 million led by Florintree, to invest in international expansion

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ideaForge, a drone manufacturer based in Mumbai, has closed its Series B funding round of $20 million led by Florintree.

The round also saw participation from its existing investors such as Celesta, a deep tech investment fund, Infosys, Qualcomm, and Infina, along with the Exim Bank of India.

Ankit Mehta, co-founder, and CEO of ideaForge said that the company will use the funding to invest in R&D, international expansion, and building its team.

Mathew Cyriac, executive chairman, Florintree Advisors, said, “... While the industry has proliferated in the last few years on the back of government policy, we expect ideaForge with its focus on building indigenous hardware within house software subsystems to gain an outsized market share in a rapidly growing industry.”

Founded in 2007, ideaForge has bagged repeat contracts from the Indian Army for its SWITCH UAVs. Its customers also include the Indian Navy, Air Force, State Police Forces, BSF, NSG, CRPF, Adani, L&T, Indian Oil, Survey of India, Indian Railways, and so on, a release by the company said.

Recently, it was announced that ideaForge was one of the few drone manufacturers and drone component manufacturers to have been selected as a beneficiary of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Others include Adani JV, Chennai-based Dhaksha Unmanned Systems, and so on.