XTI Aircraft appoints Sarita Jha as its new Chief Financial Officer

XTI Air­craft Com­pa­ny has appoint­ed finan­cial advi­sor and busi­ness strate­gist Sari­ta Jha as its new Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer.

She brings decades of expe­ri­ence in pri­vate equi­ty, cor­po­rate finance (M&A and joint ven­tures), and busi­ness devel­op­ment to the com­pa­ny, which is devel­op­ing its Tri­Fan 600 hybrid-elec­tric, fixed-wing VTOL air­craft.

Jha replaces Andrew Woglom, who will remain with XTI Air­craft in a con­sult­ing capac­i­ty.

Robert LaBelle, XTI’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, said: “We couldn’t be more pleased to have Sari­ta join the exec­u­tive team. We’re posi­tion­ing the com­pa­ny to expand oper­a­tions as we approach 2021, and she will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to XTI’s financ­ing activ­i­ties, as well as the company’s struc­ture and strat­e­gy, as we bring the Tri­Fan 600 ver­ti­cal take­off air­plane to the mar­ket.”

Jha start­ed her career as an engi­neer at Northrop Grum­man — one of the world’s largest mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy providers — before becom­ing a senior mem­ber of the busi­ness devel­op­ment team in a Gen­er­al Motor sub­sidiary.

She was then at Uni­Cred­it in Lon­don for 10 years, and was a senior mem­ber of the team, respon­si­ble for pri­vate equi­ty invest­ments totalling €1 bil­lion (enter­prise val­ue). Jha also served on the board of Mar­tur Auto­mo­tive Sys­tems.

Com­ment­ing on her new role, Jha added: “I joined XTI because of the company’s extreme­ly capa­ble and expe­ri­enced lead­er­ship team, because this air­craft is tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary, and because I think I can fill a need in the area of financ­ing and strate­gic devel­op­ment that will help us reach our goals. I’m very excit­ed to be here.”

XTI Air­craft says the Tri­Fan 600 will have the speed, range and com­fort of a lux­u­ry busi­ness air­craft. The com­pa­ny con­duct­ed suc­cess­ful hov­er tests last year and also announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with GE Avi­a­tion.

The six-seat air­craft will trav­el at 345 miles per hour, with a range of up to 1,400 miles. Using three duct­ed fans, the air­craft lifts off ver­ti­cal­ly with two wing fans rotat­ing for­ward for a seam­less tran­si­tion to cruise speed and ini­tial climb.

It can reach 30,000ft in just ten min­utes and in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the Tri­fan 600’s hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion pro­duces 40 per cent low­er CO2 emis­sions when com­pared to sim­i­lar busi­ness air­craft or heli­copters.

LaBelle added that XTI Air­craft has near­ly 100 orders placed, and said: “The mar­ket con­tin­ues to recog­nise the val­ue propo­si­tion of our unique and rev­o­lu­tion­ary air­plane and its patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy.

“Ver­ti­cal take­off com­bined with long-range, the speed and com­fort of a busi­ness air­craft, and our qui­eter and clean­er state-of-the-art hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem.”