Skye Air Mobility raises $1.7 million led by Chiratae Ventures, to scale drone delivery ops

Drone-based startup Skye Air Mobility has completed its seed round $1.7 million,  led by Chiratae Ventures, on November 9.

The round also saw participation from investors like Lead Angels, O2 Angels, Agility Ventures, Lets Venture and several marquee names including Rajeev Chitrabhanu, Ankit Nagori, Varun Alagh, Gautam Badalia, Ayush Lohia and others.

With this investment, Skye Air said it will be aiming for faster deliveries, reducing carbon emission, reducing cost, and increasing accessibility. "This investment comes at a time when we are intensifying our efforts to expand our services and collaborations in the Indian market. The new funding will facilitate our team to open untouched channels, allowing us to bring drone delivery services to more customers in India and beyond," Ankit Kumar, CEO of Skye Air Mobility said.

Kumar also explained that Skye Air has been working in the healthcare, quick commerce and ecommerce verticals. The company, based in New Delhi, is currently operating in eight cities across India and plans to expand to another 16 over next 24 months.

"We are excited to partner with Skye Air Mobility to disrupt the first and last mile logistics in an efficient and climate-friendly manner, beginning with the healthcare domain and expanding into other sectors with its logistics and SaaS solutions,” said Mandeep Julka, Vice President - Investments, Chiratae Ventures.

In recent months, Skye Air has taken up multiple drone delivery projects. Back in August, it conducted a long-range delivery of medicines for Flipkart Health+ at a distance of 60-70 km in Kolkata and surrounding areas.

In July, it conducted trials for delivering frozen food in partnership with Curefoods in Gurgaon. It also delivered essential medicines and critical lab samples using drones, from Kozhikode to Areekode in the Malappuram district of Kerala. A similar project was also taken up in Bengaluru.

Dhianu Das, Founder, Agility Ventures said, “Drone delivery is increasingly gaining ground across logistics providers to tackle inefficiencies in last mile delivery, and is expected to grow at more than 50% CAGR over the next six years. We believe Skye Air has a head start and is poised to be a leader in the industry."

"Only a handful of companies in the much-hyped drone ecosystem actually have a robust scalable solution and necessary domain knowledge. We saw that Skye Air was exceptional on both these accounts, and which drove our investment decisio," said Sushanto Mitra, the CEO & Founder of Lead Angels.