e‑Smart Group Secures Leasing Deal with SLI for BETA Electric Aircraft Fleet

e‑Smart Group, a glob­al air logis­tics plat­form, has signed an agree­ment with aero­space asset finance spe­cial­ist, SLI, to lease up to 20 BETA Tech­nolo­gies all-elec­tric air­craft to be deployed in e‑Smart’s air car­go oper­a­tions, ini­tial­ly in Europe. The agree­ment cov­ers a com­bi­na­tion of BETA ALIA CX300 elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered con­ven­tion­al take-off and land­ing (CTOL) air­craft and BETA ALIA A250 elec­tri­cal­ly pow­ered ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft.

In Novem­ber 2025, e‑Smart signed an order for up to 20 air­craft from BETA. This lat­est agree­ment with SLI con­verts that com­mit­ment to an oper­at­ing lease mod­el, shift­ing the acqui­si­tion from cap­i­tal to oper­at­ing expen­di­ture. SLI will be the own­er of the air­craft while e‑Smart will lease the assets through fixed month­ly pay­ments, a non-dilu­tive, flex­i­ble approach to asset finance.

SLI, the aero­space sub­sidiary of Libra Group, is a provider of flex­i­ble asset financ­ing solu­tions for the avi­a­tion and space indus­tries, includ­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) air­craft. SLI now holds orders for up to 190 elec­tric air­craft and autonomous car­go drones. The com­pa­ny aims to facil­i­tate the wide­spread adop­tion of this new tech­nol­o­gy through the pro­vi­sion of its leas­ing facil­i­ties. The agree­ment with e‑Smart marks one of the first times an oper­a­tor of BETA’s air­craft has uti­lized leas­ing to finance the devel­op­ment of its fleet.

e‑Smart spe­cial­izes in logis­tics solu­tions for the e‑commerce and oth­er time-crit­i­cal indus­tries. The group com­bines dig­i­tal logis­tics, prod­uct port­fo­lio car­go man­age­ment, train­ing, best prac­tice advi­so­ry and air­line ser­vices into one inte­grat­ed plat­form. The adop­tion of asset financ­ing through this part­ner­ship with SLI is expect­ed to facil­i­tate the glob­al expan­sion of e- Smart’s fleet of elec­tric air­craft. e‑Smart expects AAM air­craft to rev­o­lu­tion­ize logis­tics by pro­vid­ing a zero-emis­sion alter­na­tive to road and rail trans­porta­tion.

Praveen Vetriv­el, CEO of SLI com­ment­ed, “We admire e‑Smart Group’s vision to deploy next- gen­er­a­tion avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies in deliv­er­ing an effi­cient and sus­tain­able door-to-door logis­tics net­work capa­ble of con­nect­ing major logis­tics hubs and small­er region­al cen­ters. All-elec­tric air­craft, such as the BETA ALIA plat­form, offer an ide­al solu­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly to time-sen­si­tive appli­ca­tions such as e‑commerce, med­ical logis­tics, and urgent sup­ply chain and main­te­nance require­ments.”

Denis Ilin, CEO of e‑Smart added “Agree­ment with a strong finan­cial part­ner like SLI Aero­space with its com­mit­ment to advanced air mobil­i­ty is one of the most cru­cial ele­ments to ensure suc­cess­ful intro­duc­tion by e‑Smart Group of elec­tric avi­a­tion to the glob­al air car­go mar­ket. Both SLI and e‑Smart believe in this new tech­nol­o­gy and its long-stand­ing future, which should be sus­tain­able both envi­ron­men­tal­ly and finan­cial­ly to become a com­mer­cial suc­cess.”

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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