Skylark Drones raises $3 mn to fuel international expansion

It provides its clients with the ability to use AI powered technology products such as Spectra and Drone Mission Ops.

Skylark Drones, a leading drone platform company that counts Tata Steel, Ultratech Cement, Softbank Energy among its customers  has secured $3 million in a pre-series A funding round.

It would use the funding to strengthen its product offerings and fuel international expansion.

The funding round was co-led by investors InfoEdge Ventures and IAN Fund with participation from AdvantEdge Founders, Fowler Westrup, Redstart Labs, IKP and Vimson group.

This follows the company’s previous seed funding round, which took place in 2018.

Skylark Drones, which has offices in the USA and India, aims to elevate worksite productivity and safety by providing geospatial intelligence to different enterprises in sectors such as mining, solar power, real estate, agriculture and inspection.

It provides its clients with the ability to use AI powered technology products such as Spectra and Drone Mission Ops.

"Our vision is to unlock the economic potential of aerial intelligence," said Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy, CEO & co-founder of Skylark Drones.

“We thank the lead investors of this round and believe the participation of Fowler Westrup, a leading agriculture solutions company, and Vimson Group mining conglomerate will help further strengthen the sector focussed solutions we offer our customers.”

Skylark Drones offers end-to-end solutions with Spectra enabling worksite intelligence and several platform integrations and API access.

Drone Mission Ops enables project and fleet management for large enterprises and individual operators to effectively plan and execute drone missions.

It also offers Dronepass, a device to enable drone manufacturers to comply with local airspace regulations.

These solutions allow customers to tap into the advantages of drone data analytics and use it to plan better, construct faster, and operate in a safer way.

The company will primarily use the new funding to enhance the actionable insights from drone data that it provides, in order to aid and simplify superior business decisions and strategy for its clients.

The investment will also be used to spur international product expansion and development of its drone data analytics products.

Amit Behl, Partner at Info Edge Venture Fund said aerial intelligence is a theme that has immense potential as it provides significant cost, time and accuracy benefits for large infrastructure companies which face frequent cost and time overruns.

Skylark has built an indigenous platform that facilitates quick mobilisation of independent drone pilots, enabling them to run drone missions to gather aerial images of large worksites.

“Skylark’s computer vision software analyses this aerial imagery to offer industry-specific insights for its mining, solar and construction clients,” said Behl.

“Being amongst a limited set of players who have a full-stack offering, we believe that the opportunity for the company is global.”

Further adding, Rajnish Kapur, managing partner at IAN Fund said the global drone software market size is projected to reach $9,961.6 million by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 25.05 per cent between 2020 and 2027.

He said, with the rising adoption of advanced technologies such as AI and ML, Skylark Drones’ solutions can unlock potential while increasing productivity and ensuring the safety of work sites.

“What impressed us most was a strong and unique business model – one that is easily scalable in India and beyond,” said Kapur.

“We are delighted to make this contribution and hope the company marks its presence globally.”

Since its founding in 2015, Skylark Drones has pioneered a variety of technological advances for the drone software industry.

The company leverages drone data and transforms petabytes of aerial information into actionable business insights for clients to help them work more efficiently.

“Drones are becoming the norm for remote worksite monitoring and inspections,” said Mrinal Pai, co-founder of Skylark Drones.

“We have seen rapid adoption from marquee enterprises like Tata Steel, Ultratech Cement, Softbank Energy over the past few years.”

Kunal Khattar, managing partner of AdvantEdge Founders said the Skylark team led by Thiru and Pai is one of the best teams out there with global aspirations to build deep tech solutions and services for a full-stack array of drone applications.