Sarla Aviation gets design organisation approval from DGCA

Bengaluru-headquarted electric air taxi startup Sarla Aviation on Monday said it has received design organisation approval (DOA) from the aviation safety regulator that would help the platform transition to full commercial production.

The DOA was handed over to Sarla Aviation by Union Minister for Civil Aviation K Rammohan Naidu in the presence of Karnataka cabinet minister Rizwan Arshad and others at the inauguration ceremony of the company's new headquarters in Bengaluru on August 8, Sarla Aviation said in a statement.

Besides, the company also announced signing-in partnerships with Manipal Hospitals and Aeromed Air Ambulance, Prestige Group, Jio-bp, Jeppesen Foreflight, Hexel Composites, and Tata Elxsi.

Founded in October 2023 by Adrian Schmidt, Rakesh Gaonkar, and Shivam Chauhan and backed by Accel, along with angel investors, including Flipkart Co-Founder Binny Bansal and Zerodha Co-Founder Nikhil Kamath, the company last month completed a flight-test campaign for Sylla, its half-scale electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) technology demonstrator.

The Design Organisation Approval is the DGCA's formal recognition, under CAR 21 Subpart J, that an organisation has the design capacity, procedures and independent checking systems to design aircraft, systems and components to certified standards.

With the DOA in place, Sarla Aviation is now qualified to take its designs forward for type certification with the DGCA, a significant milestone for indigenous aerospace design capability, it said.

"...We have a full-scale Indian eVTOL here, one that Indian engineers designed, Indian hands built, and which the Indian skies will proudly carry," Naidu was quoted as saying in the statement.

"We have to ensure this is not only for a certain class of people, a certain segment, or just the urban metropolitan areas. We have to ensure these machines fly everywhere in the country," he said.

"At this speed, I believe that within two years we are going to see this (electric air taxi) ecosystem flourish in the country," he said.

The new headquarters brings Sarla Aviation's design, engineering, testing and commercial teams under one roof in Bengaluru, alongside a full-scale prototype of Shunya, India's first indigenous eVTOL of its class, the company said.

Sarla Aviation also said its demonstrator programme has completed over 500 flight tests and 18 hours of flight testing, and guests toured 12 stations across the engineering floor, from indigenous motors and 800-volt powertrain architecture to the flight simulator on which future pilots will train.

"India deserves an aerospace company that builds fully indigenous systems to transport people -- something the country has never had. And with electric propulsion, we can finally indigenise the entire supply chain, the manufacturing and the IP ownership, right here in India," said Schmidt.

Rakesh Gaonkar, Co-Founder & CTO, Sarla Aviation, said, "Every 18 months, we deliver a new prototype. The next one arrives in January 2027 and will carry out our transition flight."