India: “ePlane Secures USD1 Billion Order for 788 eVTOL Air Ambulances”

ePlane, an Indi­an eVTOL air­craft start­up, announced this week it has agreed to sup­ply 788 air ambu­lances, to the country’s Inter­na­tion­al Crit­i­cal-Care Air Trans­fer Team (ICATT), in a deal val­ued at more than USD1 bil­lion, reports Reuters.com. 

Under a non-bind­ing Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) agree­ment, ICATT, an air ambu­lance ser­vice provider, plans to deploy them across India. ePlane is tar­get­ing com­mer­cial oper­a­tions by the lat­ter half of 2026, with an ini­tial pro­duc­tion of 100 units per year.

Satya Chakravarthy, the ePlane Founder and a Pro­fes­sor at the Indi­an Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy-Madras, where his start­up was incu­bat­ed, told Reuters in an inter­view, “We can ramp up our pro­duc­tion and put things into the mar­ket to good use much more effec­tive­ly with an air ambu­lance than direct­ly going to an air taxi.” He con­tin­ued, “It’s pos­si­ble for us to ramp up air ambu­lances a lot more organ­i­cal­ly, com­pared to hav­ing to go to a rush with an air taxi.”

The air­craft will have an ini­tial range of around 68 miles, which could be increased to more than 200 kilo­me­tres lat­er on.

ePlane, who has raised USD20 mil­lion so far from investors, will look to begin with three air ambu­lance eVTOL pro­to­types that accom­mo­date a pilot, para­medic and patient, along with a stretch­er.

This MOU “marks the largest ini­tial finan­cial agree­ment in the eVTOL indus­try,” com­ment­ed ePlane in a Linkedin post. “The part­ner­ship will enable rapid emer­gency response across every dis­trict in India. At the core is the e200x air­craft, with rooftop take-off capa­bil­i­ty and the pow­er to trans­port patients sev­en times faster than road vehi­cles.”

Pro­fes­sor Satya Chakravarthy

Prof. Chakravarthy, con­tin­ued, “Our col­lab­o­ra­tion is a mon­u­men­tal step in expand­ing aer­i­al med­ical ser­vices. Faster air­lifts will bridge the gap between acci­dent sites and med­ical facilities—reducing fatal­i­ties and improv­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty.”

Dr Shali­ni Nal­wad, Founder of ICATT, added, “This is going to be a very good solu­tion in terms of organ air-lifts. 95 per­cent of the reg­is­tered patient recip­i­ents die before they get an organ. This is because of a lack of logis­tics,  and not due to lack of donors. This col­lab­o­ra­tion is going to solve the prob­lem and rede­fine access to health­care in India”

Prof. Chakravarthy explained that a fur­ther USD100 mil­lion invest­ment would be required to man­u­fac­ture the var­i­ous pro­to­types lead­ing to type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.eplane.ai

(Images: ePlane)

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