Drone manufacturing startup Zuppa plans to raise $10 million for expansion

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Mumbai: Chennai based Sree Sai Aerotech Innovations Pvt. Ltd. (SSAI), also known as ZUPPA, a homegrown drone manufacturing startup plans to raise a fresh round of funding of up to $10 million. The fund will be used to scale up its existing products that have been developed using its proprietary technology, penetrate existing markets and develop newer applications.

The initial investment round of $1 million in Zuppa was led by the IndiaNivesh Special Situations & Growth Fund – a Mumbai-based venture capital fund, along with MapMyIndia – a pioneer of digital maps in India that offers comprehensive GPS navigation and tracking solutions.

Zuppa, being the only fully integrated ‘Made in India’ embedded hardware manufacturer from design to product, is uniquely positioned to serve regulated drone and vehicle telematics sectors. The startup is the only Indian drone manufacturer that has a proprietary embedded electronic technology and is one among the select group of AIS 140 approved vehicle telematics systems.

With the recent initiatives by the aviation industry regulator, DGCA on commercial civilian drone regulation, the horizon of drones and drone-adapted technologies are expected to widen in India. This opens up a vast opportunity for Zuppa, which is poised to play a key role in this transformation through its embedded technology. Also, Zuppa’s AIS 140 compliant (as mandated by MORTH) Vehicle Tracking System is ready to transform the monitoring of 2 crore commercial vehicles across India.

“The next round of funding will be utilized towards the expansion of business from our existing products. We will retain our focus on business relating to vehicle telematics, large-area mapping drones and high precision GPS devices,” said Sai Pattabiram, Founder & MD, Zuppa.

The unique technological capabilities of Zuppa have already been recognized by John Deere, TAFE, Mahindra and MapMyIndia– a few from its growing customer base. Zuppa’s innovations have also been recognized under the ‘Innovation voucher program’ of TFSC (TANSTIA – FNF Germany).

The organization has also been funded by the Department of Science and Technology under the TIFAC-SIDBI Srijan Fund after a stringent evaluation process of the technical competency of the startup and its product ‘Zuppa Autopilot’ which was conducted by domain experts from DRDO, IITs, IISc and industry experts as well.

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