PODCAST: Dr. Satya Chakravarthy of The ePlane Company on how the company is aiming to reinvent city flight across India

Our pod­cast episode is now live! This week, we were delight­ed to be joined by Dr. Satya Chakravarthy, CEO of The ePlane Com­pa­ny.

In this episode, Dr. Satya shares the company’s mis­sion to trans­form urban mobil­i­ty through one of the world’s most com­pact eVTOL air­craft, designed to ease con­ges­tion and reduce emis­sions in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities.

The ePlane Com­pa­ny is the first pri­vate Indi­an firm to receive Design Organ­i­sa­tion Approval (DOA) from the DGCA for an elec­tric air­craft — a key mile­stone toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

The dis­cus­sion explores the company’s lift-plus-cruise con­fig­u­ra­tion, cho­sen for safe­ty, redun­dan­cy, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion effi­cien­cy over tilt-rotor designs. Satya details progress on the first full-scale pro­to­type, expect­ed to begin flight test­ing in late 2025, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion tar­get­ed for mid-2027.

The roadmap includes air ambu­lance, air taxi, and car­go vari­ants, with oper­a­tions planned to start in India before expand­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly.

Chakravarthy also high­lights India’s proac­tive reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment, includ­ing close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the DGCA and align­ment with EASA stan­dards. He notes strong pub­lic enthu­si­asm for eVTOLs, cit­ing sur­veys show­ing over 75 per cent of Indi­an respon­dents sup­port the con­cept of urban air mobil­i­ty.

Click on the Play but­ton below to lis­ten to the episode, which is avail­able on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.