Professor Satyanarayana Chakravarthy, Co-founder of ePlane, on taking India's mobility to the skies

With a BTech in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Chennai, a Master's and PhD from Georgia Tech, US, Satyanarayana, also known as Satya, went on to become an IIT Madras faculty in 1997 and has been a professor there since 2009. 

Despite his several academic accolades, Satya has also made quite a mark on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

Besides ePlane, he has Co-founded ventures like Agnikul Cosmos, Aerostrovilos Energy, X2Fuels, TuTr Hyperloop, and GalaxEye Space. But what motivated him was not the aerospace theme, but a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

"In my mind, it's exactly about solving a problem - What problem are we trying to solve and does it make sense?" he said. Satya elaborates with a cricket metaphor. "You have to play each ball by its merit. So every one of those ideas has to be gone through with what are the customer pain points you're looking at? What is the scale of that market that we are looking at? Can we create an impact? These are the things that actually go into my mind when I'm thinking about founding a startup along with co-founders as well as during the ePlane idea that I got for myself."

ePlane: The answer to urban congestion 

Simply put, ePlane's vision is to democratise aviation by making air commuting accessible to all while keeping it sustainable with battery technology. It is a flying, compact taxi with a limited range that will help people travel short distances.

Beginning with cargo and drone deliveries to taking on passenger travel, ePlane has developed a technology to get an effective yet economical commute. 

Using a VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing), Satya and his team are making compact e-aircrafts that take off like a drone, but fly like a plane. ePlane's passengers will be able to make use of this service at around two and a half times an Uber fare. The costs for the asset, maintenance, and operation all come down as it will be electrified. 

"We are making comparisons between about a thousand rupees on the road without any surge pricing and what is it, rush hour fare and all that stuff to about 2,700 rupees. So with surge pricing, rush hour and all those things, it may be a road trip that may become like 1200 to 1500, whereas we don't need to do that. So it would be 2,700," Satya says. 

Choosing de-frastructure over infrastructure for sustainable development

Infrastructure is one of the cornerstones of development, but while adapting infrastructural development, there comes the question: is it possible to make the process quicker?

Building enough and the latest infrastructure as fast as possible is always a challenge for developing countries. Though this approach can be just a paradigm, what is required is a paradigm shift, says Satya.

"So in a different paradigm, we develop a lot of smart, small, modular, scalable products that will replace all these infrastructure-heavy items. And we basically get to the same goals as what we want in terms of economic development. They come in by means of small rockets, planes, engines, crude and so on, which eventually means that I don't need large launch pads, large airports, get the pump, import lots of crude through long pipelines or oil tankers, etc.," he explains. 

“Let's say ePlane get better and better. It can do longer distances, you'll find people actually move out to suburbs and spread out and you cater to more people by flying more planes closer to their homes and so on. So it's extremely modular,” he says.

Such deeptech products can be quickly and regularly updated. This gives us a much better chance of doing way better than the developed countries.

You can listen to the full episode here