NEW DELHI: In a major push to its urban air mobility plans of developing air taxis with an L&T arm and make them in India too, Indian-American Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria-founded aerospace and defence company AIRO Group has entered into an agreement and plan of merger with Kernel Group Holdings to list on NASDAQ.
Kernel Group Holdings has signed an agreement for upto $77 million committed backstop by Meteora Special Opportunity Fund and Meteora Capital Partners and others. The combined company will be renamed AIRO Group, Inc.
“Being of Indian descent and being born in New Delhi, the Indian market is very important to us. We will look to launch our eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) — Jaunt — in India. In Mumbai it sometimes take more time to get to the airport than (a domestic) flight. We hope Jaunt Air Mobility will solve this traveling time issue. Also, we plan to launch medical drone services and pilot training in India,” Kathuria, who is the co-founder, executive chairman and largest shareholder of AIRO Group, told TOI.
AIRO has four divisions — advanced avionics; electric air mobility; uncrewed air systems and training — and brands like Aspen Avionics and Jaunt Air Mobility. The company says its estimated revenue in 2023 is $43 million, which is expected to rise to $2.9 billion in under a decade. It expects to make over 1,200 eVTOLs by 2030.
“The (strength) of AIRO is based on four key factors: the strength of the brands and existing orders and contracts; a diversified yet synergistic portfolio that is already proving its robustness with AIRO’s support of drone technologies in Ukraine: a training division that is participating in the $6.4-billion US department of defence contract program to provide close air support, intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance and adversary air training, which will drive significant revenue and profit growth; and an experienced management team,” said Dr Kathuria, a graduate of Brown University’s School of Medicine, and MBA from Stanford.
AIRO’s electric air mobility division is leading with its Jaunt Journey aircraft which has decided to set up a final assembly unit for eVTOL air taxis in India before the end of this decade.
The company has tied up with L&T Technology Services Ltd to develop this urban air mobility solution. It aims to get certification from Canadian, US and EU aviation regulators for the same by 2026 and then start delivering the $1.5 million apiece air taxis from its North American assembly.
The second assembly unit it has decided will be in India that will make the air taxis for use in the country and as well as for export to South Asia.
Initial estimates show a brick and mortar final assembly unit in India for the eVTOL should cost about $75 million. “We hope to have the facility in place by 2030 as there will be significant demand for exporting the same to south Asia from India, apart from the local demand… We are also into drone delivery for healthcare vertical and are in talks with some key Indian players, including hospitals, to bring this service to the country,” he had recently said.
