Drone Manufacturing Startup: ideaForge raises $20 Mn in Series B Funding via Florintree
- ByStartupStory | April 29, 2022
ideaForge, the drone manufacturing startup, has raised $20 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Florintree, the private equity firm. Other existing investors such as Celesta, Infina, Infosys, Qualcomm, along with the Exim Bank of India also participated in the round.
In order to ramp up investment in research and development, the startup will use the fundings. The capital will also be used by ideaForge so as to expand globally and scale up hiring across key verticals.
ideaForge CEO and cofounder, Ankit Mehta, said that in the last two years ideaForge has grown 10X and they will use this funding in order to invest in international expansion, R&D, and building a world-class team. They want to continue in order to create high performance, reliable and autonomous drones that inspires the adoption of this technology.
Last week, under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for manufacturing drones in the country released by the government, the company’s name also figured in the first provisional list of beneficiaries.
ideaForge was founded in 2008 by IIT Bombay graduates — Ankit Mehta, Vipul Joshi, Ashish Bhat, Rahul Singh, and Amardeep Singh. The startup claims to have experience of over 15 years in R&D and over 20 patents under its belt.
It boasts of a host of marquee clients such as BSF, NSG, the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, CRPF, Larsen & Toubro, Indian Oil, Adani, Indian Railways, among others .
For surveillance, crowd monitoring and rescue operations, the startup’s drones have been deployed by Indian armed forces. In verticals such as energy, utilities, telecom, and agriculture, it also offers usage in commercial applications. Since its inception, to have deployed more than 1,000 drones has been claimed by ideaForge.
In March last year, the startup had last raised $2 Mn from venture debt firm Blacksoil. In funding and venture debt from marquee names such as Infosys, Windrose Capital, among others, in total, it has raised $38.4 Mn so far.
Currently, with as much as $27 Mn raised by them over the years, 180 drone startups are operational in the country.
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