Manna Drone Delivery Seeks New Funding For U.S Expansion — Believes Future Business “Worth USD175 Billion a Year!”

Man­na Drone Deliv­ery Founder and CEO, Bob­by Healy, rarely minces his words and dur­ing a ‘Big Tech Show Pod­cast’ with the independent.ie recent­ly, he first said the com­pa­ny was seek­ing a sub­stan­tial Series B Fundrais­ing Round to expand in to Amer­i­ca, fol­lowed by the state­ment, “Manna’s tar­get mar­ket is worth USD175 bil­lion a year.”

This is an extra­or­di­nary state­ment, but we know all about the ambi­tion of the Irish ser­i­al entre­pre­neur and his deter­mi­na­tion to make Man­na suc­cess­ful. Healy says, “We want to become the biggest drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny in the world.”

New fund­ing is essen­tial for his plans and the more mon­ey raised the mer­ri­er. He com­ments on the Pod­cast, “It won’t be EUR1 bil­lion, but we will get to a point where we’ll take in bil­lions and scale it across every coun­try in the world.” He con­tin­ues, “These funds will be used for oper­a­tional cap­i­tal and for hir­ing peo­ple on the ground. Think of it as a gigan­tic air­line. You need cap­i­tal to grow.”

Up to now, Man­na has raised EUR35 mil­lion from pri­vate invest­ment includ­ing a Series A Round of EUR21 mil­lion in 2021. Yet, the new mon­ey required makes all this pale in com­par­i­son. Over time, hun­dreds of mil­lions of Euros may be required and why some say, it would be eas­i­er for Healy to float Man­na on the U.S stock mar­ket, whether it be the Nas­daq or NYSE, where there are plen­ty of finan­cial insti­tu­tions like banks, pen­sion and hedge funds, as well as the gen­er­al pub­lic, will­ing to invest.

Drone Com­pa­ny Floats on Stock Exchange, Sees Share Price Soar on Open­ing Day

Last month an Indi­an Drone com­pa­ny, IdeaF­orge Tech­nol­o­gy, float­ed on both the Bom­bay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the Nation­al Stock Exchange of India (NSE). The share price surged 92 per­cent on its Stock Mar­ket debut. Mean­while, the company’s shares ini­tial­ly list­ed at Rs 1,305.10 per share on the BSE, a pre­mi­um of 94.21 per­cent over their IPO issue price of Rs 672. On the NSE, the shares opened at Rs 1,300, up 93.45 per­cent from their IPO price.

In fact, the company’s IPO was over­sub­scribed by 123 times, show­ing the strong demand for its shares. The IPO raised Rs 567 crore (close to USD69 mil­lion), which will be used to fund the company’s growth plans. This exam­ple alone, clear­ly shows the investor appetite for drone com­pa­nies and a belief in the indus­try’s future.

At this stage, it is unclear which way Healy may turn. While the eVTOL indus­try saw a slew of Stock Mar­ket floata­tions in recent years includ­ing from EHang, Joby, Archer, Lil­i­um and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, oth­ers like Aut­oFlight and Volo­copter have cho­sen the pri­vate invest­ment route.

Depend­ing on the inter­est shown with the Series B Round, Healy aims to close it by the end of this year. It is unclear which investors have been approached or shown inter­est and whether suf­fi­cient mon­ey can be raised to cov­er, ini­tial­ly, Healy’s enor­mous medi­um-term ambi­tion.

Amer­i­ca has a rep­u­ta­tion to be an ele­phants’ grave­yard for up and com­ing over­seas busi­ness­es, where the U.S already has a num­ber of well estab­lished drone deliv­ery com­pa­nies like Zipline, Wing, Sky­Drop, Swoop Aero and Drone­Up. The move into Amer­i­ca requires care­ful plan­ning and thought. For it is easy to lose large amounts of mon­ey here and very quick­ly. 

Man­na Comes To Dal­las

Healy must tread very care­ful­ly, espe­cial­ly when he points out, “The U.S is miles behind Europe for drone deliv­er­ies. Ire­land is two or more years ahead as the indus­try has great sup­port here con­cern­ing reg­u­la­tions.” With­out Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS), for exam­ple, it is unlike­ly the Amer­i­can busi­ness can become prof­itable. There­fore, how long will it take to have this essen­tial U.S reg­u­la­tion approved?

To entice poten­tial Amer­i­can investors, Healy says there are plans to launch a small tri­al in Dal­las dur­ing Octo­ber with a lat­er aim for the Man­na drones to trans­port larg­er prod­ucts once the fast food, cof­fee and med­i­cines mar­ket is estab­lished, to attract oth­er forms of busi­ness.

Mean­while, his most recent deliv­ery tri­al is soon to start in the Irish town of Blan­chard­stown (please read arti­cle below). “This is where we take the train­ing wheels off and become prof­itable at a unit lev­el,” remarks Healy.

What makes this tri­al so spe­cial is that dai­ly BVLOS has been grant­ed, a rare feat up to now for the drone indus­try. Already, eight well-known brands have jumped at the chance to be involved along­side a host of local retail­ers. 

Healy believes Man­na can become the first drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny amongst its peers, to become a prof­itable busi­ness because of this BVLOS award. For with­out it, a prof­it is nigh on impos­si­ble. He reck­ons that dur­ing next year, up to 2 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in Ire­land may have the ben­e­fit of a Man­na deliv­ery.

Man­na Aero to Begin “World’s Largest Drone Deliv­ery Tri­al”

At present, the com­pa­ny is a big fish in a small Irish pond. Amer­i­ca will deter­mine whether Man­na can expand, sur­vive and thrive in a very large shark-infest­ed ocean.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.manna.aero

(News Source: https://www.independent.ie)

(Pics: Man­na)