Bengaluru-based Bumble Bee Flights raises $37 million to build autonomous air taxis

Ben­galu­ru-based autonomous air mobil­i­ty solu­tions provider Bum­ble Bee Flights has raised INR 300 Cr ($37 Mn) from the UK-based tech­nol­o­gy con­glom­er­ate SRAM & MRAM Tech­nolo­gies and Resources Lim­it­ed.

Bum­ble Bee Flights plans to use the fresh funds to set up an assem­bly plant in Odisha for man­u­fac­tur­ing air taxis whose first pro­to­type is expect­ed to be launched by April 2023. The start­up said that it would man­u­fac­ture air taxis under the brand Bee Flights that would be cer­ti­fied and avail­able for pro­duc­tion by 2024.

Bum­ble Bee Flights plans to design and man­u­fac­ture the air taxis by part­ner­ing with oper­a­tors. The first step is obtain­ing a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion aimed for mar­kets like the US, the UK, the UAE, India, and Sin­ga­pore.

Bum­ble Bee Flights founder Arjun Das com­ment­ed: “These autonomous air taxis would not only ease the already bur­dened urban road infra­struc­ture but also will work towards reduc­ing car­bon foot­prints.

“Bee1 is the first air taxi from India that will be cer­ti­fied in mul­ti­ple coun­tries and is intend­ed for var­i­ous uses includ­ing human trans­porta­tion, air ambu­lance, air taxi, and in the logis­tics and sup­ply chain sec­tors.”

Found­ed by Das in ear­ly 2022, Bum­ble Bee Flights claims to have designed and devel­oped India’s first autonomous air mobil­i­ty solu­tion capa­ble of human trans­porta­tion with mul­ti­ple use case sce­nar­ios such as air ambu­lance, logis­tics, recre­ation­al use, and also defence appli­ca­tions.

The com­pa­ny claims its air taxis would run on solar-charged swap­pable bat­ter­ies and would weigh around 300 kgs, com­pared to over one-third of heli­copters that weigh about 1,000 kgs and more.

Das said that the air taxis will have the capac­i­ty to car­ry one per­son along with a suit­case and land on the rooftop of apart­ments with ade­quate space, unlike heli­copters that need spe­cif­ic heli­pads. The air taxis can fly for 20 min­utes for a dis­tance of 20 Km.

Das believes that self-dri­ven air taxis would become a reg­u­lar fea­ture in the world by 2035 when about 10% of the trans­porta­tion would be man­aged and con­trolled by these fly­ing vehi­cles, which would stream­line dai­ly com­mut­ing, reduce pol­lu­tion, and more.