[Funding] Drone specialist ideaForge raises INR 15 crores from BlackSoil

A homegrown UAV manufacturer, ideaForge has raised INR 15 Crs from BlackSoil. The company has recently received a USD 20 Mn order from the Indian Army for its SWITCH UAVs. SWITCH is a Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL). It has advanced capabilities of operating at high altitudes and difficult climatic conditions for day and night surveillance. Thus, it will use the current fund to meet the working capital requirements of the company to service its large order book.

Speaking on the development Ankit Mehta, CoFounder, and CEO of ideaForge said, “We are pleased to have Blacksoil as our partner. The time of the funding is opportune as we expect strong growth in our product pipeline. The funds, along with recent fundraise from Infosys and other investors will support ideaForge in the execution of our burgeoning order book. We also hope to build on this relationship and catapult the company into the next phase of growth.”

“ideaForge has created a robust line of drones backed by best in class hardware and software capabilities. Their products suit the Indian enterprise customers. They solve for a wide range of use cases suitable to Indian requirements. We believe the new Indian Army contract is just a beginning for large-scale adoption of UAVs across security, surveillance, mapping for Defence, Industrial and also Agricultural applications in India. Covid has also accelerated the adoption and use of drones for various new use cases in urban areas. It is indeed a pleasure to be associated with such a deep tech company and help our country advance further in the Atmanirbhar initiative in a sunrise sector,” said Ankur Bansal, Director, BlackSoil Capital.

About ideaForge

4 IIT Bombay alumni, Ankit Mehta, Rahul Singh, Ashish Bhat and Vipul Joshi founded the startup in 2007. Based out of Mumbai, ideaForge produces rugged and high-precision UAV systems. Major uses of the system include inspection, surveillance and mapping with integrated vertical solutions; across defence, homeland security, mining, construction, agriculture, energy and utilities.

Currently, the organization has also deployed over 1000 systems and has trained over 1400 pilots in services including Indian Army, Navy, Air-Force, all CAPFs (CRPF, BSF, NSG, etc), State Police Forces, Indian Railways, TAFE, NTPC, DRDO, L&T and many more. Further, less than a month ago, the startup signed a $20 million contract with the Indian Army. The contract of supplying a high-altitude variant of ideaForge’s SWITCH UAV spans for a period of 1 year. The Indian Army also uses ideaForge’s flagship product NETRA.