Ep5: Electric Wings & Flying Taxis: Revolutionising Urban Mobility ft. Prof Satya Chakravarthy

Every minute that I was spending at IIT Madras and I was just amazed seeing what I was seeing. Who professor Satya Chakraarti is? How did he become that opportunity knocks the prepared mind? So we were prepared. When do you think we'll settle on bars or do you think we can settle on Mars? I mean it's it's it's a matter of time and it could happen in the next 15 years perhaps. What was the kind of trends that you saw in the student community? A lot of young people are actually taking up to startups where they're solving people's problems. If we are able to solve these

problems for India, we can actually make it affordable for the rest of the world. All these activities are pertaining to nation building. So it's one thing to be able to develop like a technology stack. Another thing is to be able to package all of that stuff into a product and that gets lot more value. When our products get built, uh we can probably say we have built the nation too. A vertical takeoff and landing will mean that the consumers in large congested cities will now have a lot more convenience. But I think progressively we have actually got to point where it

seems to be doable like taking off from rooftops of buildings that will actually change the face of aviation. What other science fiction ideas are you very fascinated by? Teleportation is what I think about in lot of congested cities and it's just impossible for a person to be taken to a hospital in time and now you're solving for that. How do you feel about that and how how did that happen? [Music] The Hustle Group Company. Let me introduce you to the Hustle Group Company. It's a lifestyle brand that's redefining street wear through the power

of fashion, self-belief, and resilience. The second one being Discover Dollar, which is an AIdriven tech company that helps brands and retailers recover hidden dollars from overp payments and leakages. Docs Now's intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect, manage, govern, and collaborate on the data front, transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line all in a secure and a single [Music] environment. Hello everyone, welcome to

yet another episode of the Innovators and Disruptors podcast. I'm your host Ab Tundan and today we're going to talk about a lot of areas that I'm very excited about personally. It's going to deal into a lot of innovative technologies, a lot of exponential technologies, uh air mobility, uh road mobility and so on and so forth, satellites and lot of other exponential technologies which are creating impact in the lives of millions of people and will continue to do so in the future as well. And for that we have an amazing amazing guest today with us. uh his name

is professor Satya Chakraarti. Thank you so much sir for coming in. Thank you. A quick introduction about him. He's a scientist. He's an innovator. He's an entrepreneur. He has done so many different things that I am so inspired by what he has to share today. So we'll talk to you uh professor Satya about some of these things and very importantly you know he's the founder of eplane company something that I've been very excited about all these years. I wanted to talk to you about that as well. But before we go deeper into this, I wanted to talk to you about who

Professor Satya Chakraarti is. How did you become that? What was your upbringing like, sir? Yeah, I mean um if you remove all of the stuff that you just mentioned, I'm just a normal guy, right? So, grew up um in a middle-ass family uh back back when I when I grew up in Chennai. uh in fact uh maybe a lower middle-ass family at that time uh when we were and u uh both my parents did not go to college um so of course my sister and I were the ones who went to college first in our family and uh I had the opportunity to go to ID

Madras uh from where I was um and uh uh once at Madras then you get more exposure to the ways of the world um and uh from there I could pick up to go to uh the US for my masters in PhD at Georgia Tech. Y um and uh yeah then within within a couple of years of working there uh then I decided to come back to IDMAS to teach. Mhm. Um and uh went through my career progression for about 10 years which is a typical time um that it takes for uh somebody who joins as an assistant professor to become like a full professor. Mhm. And around the same time I also had the

opportunity to lead the um the effort to establish one of the world's largest combustion research centers in academia. Yes. um uh which then led me to think about uh product development very seriously and then where's the market for it and who is going to pay for it and where am I going to get the funding for it and how do I position this uh and all that stuff and then that kind of slipped me into the entrepreneurial journey. Yeah. So that's in in a nutshell that's this is how it happened. you've just you've been way beyond humble in mentioning a lot of

things that you just did. Uh I in my research I realized that uh you know when you picked up uh your undergrad from IIT Madras you were the bash topper in aerospace right in fact you got the award the HL uh excellence award as well right. Uh before we even get into that, I wanted to understand what got you into aerospace engineering because back in the day aerospace engineering was not a very commonly thought of uh stream to be picked up and you decided to go into that uh you know yeah I think so for most people um that get into IITs it's a question of what's your ball on your

rank and that kind of decides what you will do for the rest of your life if you want to stick to that in the first place and uh I did so kind of decided that. So um I did get a certain rank that allowed me to choose um branches and campuses in a particular combination and um um I could have I mean I did of course have multiple other choices but uh uh Madras aerospace engineering was the top choice that I did. um that seemed like that was within grasp for the rank that I was. Um in fact it was it was I mean I could have tried chemical engineering. I could have tried

metological methological material science uh civil or naval architecture or lots of other branches in other that that were that were open for the kind of rank that I had. Right. But um yeah, so I mean I could give you like a very fancy reply saying that I was very excited about aerospace engineering and all that stuff. I think that would be a bit far from the truth. Okay. Among all the options that I had, aerospace engineering seemed a bit cool. Mhm. Um so I think uh this is like 1987. So um ISRO was had uh flown a few rockets

that had like I think one of them had succeeded maybe others were actually landing in the sea right um and um we had um uh Abdul Kalam actually migrate from ISRO to DRDO and um kind of uh pilot the integrated guided missile development program where they were launching about five missiles to be developed. I think it's like Pritui, Yagni, Trishul, Akash and Nag and um I think Abdul Kalam was actually at the top of all of that stuff. Fortunately for me um he was the chief guest at my convocation and he awarded the prize that you just

mentioned. Wow. Um that's amazing. And um um yeah, I think there was there was some buzz around but uh most of it was governmental but that was okay. So this is like the pre-91 uh po know the liberalization era right. Um so getting a no creek uh job is like a pretty good thing right so true yeah u so you didn't really have like great ambitions see I mean in terms of uh I mean to to think about it like if you were to actually join ISRO or join DRDU and then made your missiles or rockets so that's actually pretty big pretty big ambition by itself right so

uh it's not about like how much you earn what's your what's your position all of that stuff right so yeah India was already doing some pretty big stuff at that And yeah, that was pretty exciting. Wow, that's amazing. Uh, in fact, so is it is it during your IT Madras days that you found uh your calling for combustion and propulsion technologies? Uh well, you know, uh um so yeah, I did actually have a proclivity for what's called as propulsion and I did end up actually doing a couple of uh internships that involved combustion. So in my at the end of my um second year

there was a position that was open um um at at my department for an internship to assist a uh PhD student. Okay. Who was burning solid rocket propellants in the lab and uh that's that was my first trust with burning anything. Um didn't realize that that would kind of become like a craze for me to think about burning everything. Is it fun doing that? Uh not exactly. You got to be safe, of course. Yeah. But but I have actually uh taken a shot at burning lots of stuff uh at at very high pressures as well as uh at like going all the way to burning

garbage. Yeah. And so on. Yeah. Wow. Right. That's been an amazing journey. I think you did mention this uh you know you along with few others uh founded the national center for combustion research and development uh which is the largest uh research facility globally when it comes to combustion right uh what led to this you know I mean it's the largest facility globally on combustion and that's a technology which is so important critical today you know when we talk about air mobility as well yeah so um I think historically IIT Madras

did have a fairly large um set of combustion uh related faculty members from multiple departments u but I think um there was there was this realization across um different cersing from let's say the um uh adviser to the government of India the principal scientific adviser to the government of India um at the time so then there was this planning commission back then so there were these several layers where they realized that uh unless you actually have like a very deep and broad uh combustion research going as like a program. Uh it would um

it would actually kind of be a handicap to foster the economy of the country. Um so specifically the planning commission had actually thought about this and um said that for both for for both automobile combustion as well as thermal power which were the drivers of the economy back then as well as the strategic importance on space and defense. uh combustion was very important to solve these twin problems of uh uh energy um uh security and uh in the environment. Right? So this was in the u 2000s, right? So um we we did not really realize uh the solar uh

revolution that was coming up um at the time. Uh we did not realize um the electrification revolution that was coming up on vehicles. Um but of course the the the uh strategic uh you know interest in space and defense actually got enlarged to u you know serving uh even MNC's who are actually coming into doing um aerospace propulsion and aerospace combustion like jet engines um for for commercial aircraft kind of thing. Uh so all of these things kind of changed from the 2000s to the 201s. Um but the core essence of uh the need to do combustion to uh uh be safe in terms

of environment as well as uh to be able to explore alternatives um was actually there and that's what led to the establishment of this combustion center and uh opportunity knocks the prepared mind. So we were prepared um we were kind of like up for the uh game saying yeah sure we will we will be able to set it up and um so on. So we did like lots of detailed uh workings on what does it take for us to actually set up something like that. And so we now have like a five-story building for combustion research like none other in the world. The largest uh

uh floor space, the the the best facilities as well as uh the largest number of faculty in diverse areas of combustion. All of that put together multiple metrics and and and uh the number of projects that we have uh uh uh done for the number of uh industry uh industries and companies or organizations and uh um uh and the amount of funding that we have uh garnered for all of that stuff pretty much and then the the number of publications that we have uh been able to put through over the time and the number of PhDs that we have graduated.

Um there are lots of metrics by which we can actually um you know target global standards. Makes a lot of sense and that that's fantastic. In fact you also lead the DR center for uh of perpetual technology at ID. So my sense is that you know there's a lot of u innate R&D that's happening which is at global levels or probably beyond as well considering that you know some of these are the largest facilities that you're talking about which are present you know there number of uhmicians scientists etc coming together to solve for this uh how do you do you see that the previous

decade was a golden decade where a lot of these uh you know kind of initiatives were coming up. Do you see the current decade as the golden decade or do you think in the future is going to propel us further for you know nation development? I think the best is yet to come always right. So we always have to be hopeful and optimistic about something better that might happen than what's happened in the past. Um the very question that you're asking essentially implies that we have had a fairly good run last decade which is a good thing. So the question basically is that how do

we build on it? uh instead of saying the past was uh the past was better right that would kind of say that we are not doing well now and the question then we'll ask we had to ask is why are we not doing well now right and and that's that's not acceptable right so uh and and and it's not that way either right so we have actually been doing much better now when compared to 10 years back the research funding that we commanded uh definitely uh was pretty good uh there's no doubt about it but uh in my own way and in my in my view um the way I have actually kind of steered

um away from getting the government research funding to uh um you know accomplish R&D for uh the research labs or any other organization like let's say a G aviation or uh BHL or any of these people that we have been doing working with at the combustion center. Um what we what we believe now is we are actually in the position to develop some key products uh which can go to market and have a fairly high market value and uh that actually helps us position ID Madras what we do at the combustion center or any anything that's associated with uh you know my geography uh as

something that contributes to the GDP of the country and uh that's super important u we should be able to uh article calcate and translate the work that we do in the labs onto how that actually contributes to the the GDP of the country and uh the answer is um try to do this u uh in a way that actually creates uh high value products that command a market uh presence um and therefore you should actually be able to exile a bunch of investors to invest in you. So if you think about it uh in in real terms, we did actually get like about hundreds of cres of rupees in

research funding within a very short period of time at the combustion center after the seed grant of about let's say 46 crores or what 50 crores close to that. Um but um uh the kind of investor funding that we are actually getting subsequently for a naggnicle or an e-lane or any of those things is actually uh you know overshadowing uh that right. So uh when it comes to so it's one thing to be able to develop like a technology stack another thing is to be able to package all of that stuff into a product and that gets lot more value right uh and that's what we are

actually doing right now and I have at least in my mind multiple such products to actually engage on for the next uh decade right so which essentially means that the next decade is actually going to be better than this decade and this decade is this decade is better than the previous decade That that's so fantastic to hear because while I was growing up in fact you mentioned 1987 uh the convocation year I was one year 91 was my convocation 87 is when I joined. Yeah. Okay. So 87 I was one year old. I'm much younger of course uh you

know but but when I was growing up you know there used to be always this conversation around uh a lot of amazing stuff happening on the academic side but not seeing the light of the day as a formulated product. Right. A package product that goes out and is then embibed in applications which are of national security. That's exactly what I'm saying is now happening in this decade. Yeah. So you are in a sense building the nation. You are nation. All these activities are pertaining to nation building. Sure. I mean uh when we when our products get built

uh we can probably say we have built a nation too. No no but the GDP addition to it is is in fact a lot of R&D. Yeah. plus plus the jobs that we can create and stuff. Yes. This is fantastic. Uh one one quick question because you then also in parallel were a professor very celebrated professor a lot of awards nationally internationally as well for the kind of work that you're doing. Uh do you see the the new generation of students who were coming in had a similar hunger or was it in did you see it increasing? Was it same you know what was the kind of trends that you saw in

the student community in terms of their hunger for contributing towards the growth of the country contributing towards uh solving for key challenges using exponential technologies right so there are two uh answers to that and and both answers are actually extremely positive first of all right um so there are a whole bunch of uh I mean I I wouldn't necessarily uh you know credit the student community with thinking about nation building and all of those things. Uh uh but that's fine because when when you're when you're 20some uh you don't think about

all those big things like nation building not I mean uh even now when I'm when I'm whatever I'm more whatever age that I am at um if I if if I may contribute to the nation building yeah it's great but you know we are we are small I mean we we're not each of us is not is doing like a little bit to you know the nation's middling and so on. So I think um we we shouldn't actually put like such a huge uh thing on uh young people's shoulders. Mhm. Uh but people are doing very well. So um the two things that people are doing definitely today are uh one of them is um a lot of

young people are actually taking up to startups where they're solving uh people's problems um like for example uh like an Uber or an Ola that you think about that and connecting people or deliveries that you can get um like what do you call taking things from one place to the other or uh food deliveries or whatever it is right all of these things are actually solving problems that we would otherwise face right when we wake up in the morning till when we get back uh to the to bed. Um I think that's nation building too, right? The nation is basically made of people uh who are

around and uh people face problems and those those are getting solved and there is some value that's actually created out of it and that creates jobs and and and u um maybe creates wealth. All of the stuff is actually nation building. uh that's one thing that's definitely happening in the last 10 years or 15 years whatever that's time frame that you think is actually exponentially growing the number of startups that are coming out and stuff increasingly we are seeing particularly out of ID Madras we can confidently say many of these startups actually have like a technology

element to it which actually increases the value of the solutions u uh to go to the people and disrupts the cost structure again because it has to be affordable to uh to people in India and progressively it means that If we are able to solve these problems for India, we can actually make it affordable for the rest of the world as well. So increasingly we will find that uh there is a very good chance of us exporting technologies already happening now with with a company like detect in India uh the At Madras just now actually been positioning itself in the US and Europe

and and so on. So that is one part of the story. The second part of the story is um what do students do while they are in uh in the campus and um I would actually give the example of the Abashkar hyperloop team uh which starting from 2017 onwards and continuing now year on year with the team composition changing leadership emerging and new people joining and then leaving all of that stuff u I've had a ringside view uh as a as a continuing faculty uh adviser um from 2018 onwards to see what they do and they are actually taking on

technological challenges like building Hyperloop pods um Hyperloop tube vacuum tube um Hyperloop cabin all of these things and working out the technoeconomics of all of these things consistently over the last 8 years 8 to right and um that's something that I would have not really even dreamt of when I was a student and that's just one of those teams you have like a rocket team you have a electric race car team. There is a autonomous ground um bot team and and and there are multiple such teams that are actually uh you know dirtying their hands trying to turn the

screwdriver and the uh spanner and getting things done, moving things, robotics, all of that stuff, right? It's extremely fascinating uh what what they end up doing outside of the classroom how they engage themselves in developing these things and these are actually leading to startups like uh uh the team called Raftar that actually was doing race cars is the one that actually gave birth to Aether energy and so on. So u the the the and then Aishkar Hyperloop actually has given rise to TUT Hyperloop which is a which is a startup here. The the Hyperloop competition worldwide uh

that Elon Musk ran last decade and now uh went to Europe and then now we are actually initiating that in India at ID Madras. All of these things are giving rise to startups that will go on to solve these problems technologically and so on. So these things are amazing things that are happening in front of us. uh we got to be extremely um happy that we are actually living in these times. No, I I'm extremely excited about it and u I have visited IT Madras and IT Madras research park couple of times and I've been mind blown by the kind of innovation specifically using

exponential technologies that I've seen about 8 years ago I was seeing uh voice tech being big coming from IIT Madras I was talking about self balancing bike to UN SDGs to a lot of other comp I mean examples that you just gave It was just amazing for a person who was coming from corporate innovation to just be breathing that air. I'm I know it's sounding very dramatic right now but to be honest I have always been very fascinated by it. In fact uh in one of those uh meetings is when I first came to know about the e-plane company and in the same uh you know visit I had met

professor moneywin from Merkel haptics. Correct. Now it is through these conversations that I when I came to know about what they were doing. I was in a company called as Lowe's and we were focused on tactile e-commerce as a area that I wanted to focus on from a you know little far futuristic research you know not immediate gains but you know you're trying to disrupt something and I said as part of tactile e-commerce can we use haptic technology to really create the sensation of touch and feel on your mobile screen. If you are shopping as a consumer, you're seeing a

product, can you touch and feel it? Yeah. That's an amazing thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think so. But it was amazing to see Professor Manwan and his team immediately jump in and say that, you know, let's figure it out. Correct. You know, we have people who'd love to, you know, you know, try it out. He has this lab called the touch lab. Yes. And I experienced that and every minute that I was spending at Madras and I was just amazed uh seeing what I was seeing. In fact, that that brings me to another question. You as a professor uh are also so revered in your

community. In fact, you just spoke so highly of your students, right? In fact, saying that, you know, there should not be so much a burden on their on the young shoulders. Is is that the reason why you called mama? No, no. It's like the the nickname. So, so um I don't know exactly what the the hostel culture is these days. I've not really been to a hostel myself in in a long time. Um but uh the hostile culture that prevailed uh when I was a student is for each of us to actually get like a nickname. Uh and u yeah so I think the the the the nickname

that I got called mama uh was given to me the day I stepped into the hostel. Okay. I looked a bit bigger than other people. Right. So yeah um yeah that's how it stuck. Yeah that's about it. Yeah. Okay. And mama is the paternal uncle. Is that what it is? Paternal uncle. Yeah, that's that's the idea. Paternal, maternal, whatever you want to call uncle. Basically an uncle, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, um yeah. So, so the good thing about that is it's actually a fairly respectable nickname. There are lots of other people's nicknames that we can't

talk [Laughter] about. Uh you know, because when I hear mama, I'm sorry, it's it's a very stupid example that I'm going to give you here. When I hear the word mama, the one word that resonates in my head is probably because of the movie culture that I've grown up in is katapa. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure. Diving back into your zone of impact. Six startups. Some of them you just mentioned about six different startups. Amazing diversity in the exponential technologies. Each of them

working in starting with the e-plane company focus on EV talls and air mobility. Then Agnicle Cosmos on space tech and satellites uh with with varied payloads capacity and now giving a very good competition globally to a lot of other players in the space uh to aerost energy on micro gas turbines for efficient energy usage to x2 fuels and energy waste to energy I think you did mention about this as well it's a it's it's utilizing waste and creating energy out of that in a very efficient way uh galaxy or galaxy I earth observation satellites for again disaster monitoring

envir environmental monitoring and so on and so forth and uh tutor hyperloop like you just mentioned for u you know road mobility but at hyperloop uh speed so these are the six that actually I uh is where I actually stopped being a co-founder but there are other others that are that I'm continuing to be an adviser of there are at least another three more that I'm advising wow I mean okay what is left out I mean and you mentioned that a decade full of ideas that you have that you're going to be working on? No, that the the the the future decade of ideas is yet to happen.

Okay. So that that's not part of the nine startups that that that we're talking about. The three the six plus three that I that I am currently advising. Um yeah. So I think um the the what I realized was it's not really about um the not just the problem that we're solving or the technology that uh um that that goes with it and all that stuff. Of course, the technology is important otherwise people will not really see a role for me to be an adviser of or even to run the company by myself as as I do at Eplane. Um but um

we have to actually look at um uh a third level which is what is the value that that we bring to the table um as in with with the with the technology that we develop and uh the product that we put out and all that stuff. So it's it's it's not about just making a cool product. It's not about packing a lot of uh cool technology. It's about and it's not about actually even solving a problem for a customer which is actually super important. Um but ultimately uh what do you think is a customer capable of paying for it and how many such customers exist? Um so what's the market

size in terms of number of customers in your um clientele or the the the uh customer segment as well as if you were to actually look at the paying capacity for the product that you're putting what's the kind of a rupee or a dollar value that you can command for the for a market size right I think that's actually super important so for for exponential technologies it's very important for us to kind of think backwards from uh what's the value of the problem that we are solving. Um, and so is it really worth spending time solving that problem? Uh, is it does it

have a technological challenge to be met in order to solve that problem or is it a social uh challenge or is it a business challenge? There are multiple ways by which you can skin the cat on getting to market with. Um, not all of them need to be solved by technology alone. So if if you now have all these kinds of filters and then you now say okay what's the technology involved and does it require us to actually create any IP that would be a moat uh for somebody else not to get in. So all of these things have to kind of stack up. So it's kind of like the Swiss cheese uh

approach. Um so if I see all these things kind of stacking up um in front of me when somebody comes and tells me that they want me to be an adviser off I I jump in. U and uh for good measure I also actually had further ideas to the uh the co-founders uh to add to their misery um and uh you know because if I'm actually coming and telling them do this uh and that this would be better they could be in a dilemma uh this guy is actually telling me to do something more than what I'm game for or whatever it is right so I mean just to give you an example when agnikul co-founders walked

up to me and said they wanted to make a rocket I said hey why why don't we actually think about like a balloon is balloon assisted launch or a uh aircraft assisted launch and so on. So that's kind of like an aerial launch that will make it a much better rocket than what we are doing currently. Uh those ideas actually still remain uh with us. We will be exploring those. Uh but uh they said back off we will just do the ground launch the conventional way first before we can actually get to all these fancy ideas. So one that makes sense, right? So, you need to actually get to the

market with what's doable, even if you're doing something new, something different. Um, but it's all about uh the business case. Um, the technology, the IP, all of that stuff should actually support a business case. Uh, and get you to the market ASAP, no matter how long it takes. That's the uh, you know, uh, the playbook that we need to follow. Uh, if if all of these things align, I'm in. Amazing. That's amazing. any any particular idea or two uh in in these nine that you've spoken about right startups that you're working with uh or more that is the closest to heart

equally the reason is um I believe uh it it it actually does all the stuff that I said um uh it will actually create a lot of value um in terms of the market size it'll come on um and uh the number of customers that it can actually serve right away. All of that stuff put together. Um I mean a lot of other things could actually be a lot fancier, right? Uh I think the closest to market as well as u uh you know expanding on the market and all the stuff that I am in involved in could be eane. Yeah. You you've been constantly talking about that the e-plane company is the closest

to heart and for all the right reasons. How did it happen? you know, and I'm sure there must have been a lot of challenges along the journey. Could you talk to us a little bit about that as well? Right. So, I think I've mentioned this several times uh in in multiple podcasts about uh that particular uh evening on the 1st of October 2016 when I listened to this video uh by Tony Saba for about 53 minutes and then I had this transformation u that I went through on what am I doing with combustion and uh why can't I actually jump to electric and do electric planes. M um so for some

time I was actually obsessed with uh just making a normal plane that's electric and that's actually a vision that I still carry with me. Um so uh the reason why electric planes are actually super important is they will um immediately bring down the cost of flying by half. Um so the maintenance cost and the operating cost will be out of the window. developing these planes and manufacturing them out of India will also bring down the asset cost of these planes right like no other. So all put together uh if the next time we we were to actually get to the point of making

these uh let's say large electric planes that can fly from one amput to the other um to become a reality uh anytime soon. You should actually get your ticket price to be half of what it is. Amazing. Um and that will essentially enable lots of people to fly uh from point to point uh and and look at look at the look at the situation right electric planes can't go too far right to to with with the kind of battery technologies that we have the range is limited um so uh necessity is the mother of invention so we will actually start opening up lots of air strips that are actually lying

dormant um within short distances of each other um so that electric planes can fly between them uh and we can actually pop up lots of smaller raorts uh in all of these places for people to actually fly between these places u and uh we will actually get the entire population moving in the air u with with very affordable uh costs. So this is this is actually a lot more fascinating than even the evol uh that I'm doing. The EV tall um is beset with technological challenges because we have to actually defy gravity and take off vertically and land vertically. Uh and

and we have to actually marry two technologies together, the vertical takeoff as well as the forward flight. And then we have to worry about hey what is the vertical takeoff part of the plane doing while we're going forward versus uh what's the forward flight part of the thing namely the wings doing when we are taking off vertically? How do you actually marry the two in a way uh that's advantageous to both in times when they're not uh supposed to be effective so that we are actually having like a beautifully uh optimized configuration. Those are all things that

we are solving for right now. But if I were to actually go back and just do a airplane vanilla uh you know a fixed wing uh aircraft which is just electric that will actually change the face of aviation and that's the day that I'm actually waiting for. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Because in my head I was thinking uh a vertical takeoff and landing will mean that the consumers in large congested cities will now have a lot more convenience. In fact, you know, while growing up, there was a a cartoon show called as Jetsons, right? That you know, all of us, I mean, a lot of us my age,

we grew up seeing this and we were very inspired by that that you know, probably in our lifetime, we'll get to a place where vertical takeoff and landing happens and you're probably sitting in your house and you know, small port even 10 years ago like about 2015 when people were talking about u taxis um or or flying taxis, flying cars, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, it was considered in the realm of science fiction. Yeah, but I think progressively we have actually got to point where it seems to be doable and we will start with what we what what we can do and

then progress to what we need to do. Um so effectively in electric aviation uh we are essentially solving the harder problem first of the VTOL and uh you know scoping new markets um like taking off from rooftops of buildings where people are and uh taking them to across the city. Uh that's a different problem than what conventional aviation currently solves by asking you to go to an airport and then fly fly out of that to another city and so on. But effectively and eventually we will actually get there with electric aviation too. So what we're doing now is

actually like a precursor to what might actually change the face of aviation in the next decade or so. Wow. I on a lighter note I in 2018 when I first visited um uh ID Madras and I had come to know about the e-lane company back in the day it was just the onset journey of the company and I was sitting with at that time is when I actually had this idea that we we should actually go all the way to making larger planes that will go from airport to airport which is electric. But then I had to kind of uh sort of grudgingly admit that we need to solve

the EV tall problem first. All right. No, I think you're solving this and you're very close to almost being commercial out there, commercially out there, right? I think it's so brilliant and that's exactly I was saying I was sitting with Prangjul Arjun Shalet and I had come back from the trip from Madras from Chennai and I was I wagered with my wife that by 2025 we would be sitting on a flying taxi in the city you know and she said that's not possible. Of course, I early in this year, a month ago, she when I was telling her that, you know, I'm

going to be bringing you in as as a guest, she was telling me, "But you did lose." And I was like, "But I think we're very close to that reality." Is it that you are not going to sit in the aircraft by 2025, but we will have a human being sit there. Amazing. I would love to nominate myself as a guinea pig. No, no, we had actually have test pilots, experimental test pilots do their job. I mean, they have to be qualified for it. But uh in about a year from then uh we should actually have normal people sit there. I'm going back home and waging again. Yeah, you should.

Thank you. You should I'll support you. Thank you. Thank you so much. In fact, uh I mean I think the recent partnerships uh the big partnership with ICAT, a billion dollar for flying ambulances, right? That is so brilliant. We were speaking about nation building. Again, I'll bring back to that point. This is so critical today. We're not talking about, you know, just saving time uh and money for normal leisure activities, work activities, etc. We're talking about people's life being saved potentially because of uh you know vertical takeoff and landing uh and

flying uh ambulances which will really save so many people's lives. Uh I have seen in lot of congested cities that it's just impossible for a person to be taken to a hospital in time. Correct. and now you're solving for that. How do you feel about that and how how did that happen? Yeah, I mean uh so I have actually sat in an ambulance with uh uh one of my closest relatives, you know, having to rush to the hospital and uh look out the window, the the windshield and see how the traffic is and how the driver really stretchs it out to get there and we have all we all of us have

actually been uh sitting in cars where we just can't move to let the ambulance pass by. Uh we're helpless about it and so on. So it's it's actually a horrendous situation uh on the roads most of the time. Um uh we definitely want to actually get there to solve that problem uh ASAP. Um and that's exactly what we are trying to do. We are our first um uh version that we are actually putting out into the market as an air ambulance. Um mainly because uh it it actually makes uh uh a a business sense rather than uh rather than the social aspect of it. uh simply because it's

super important for us to be able to modulate the uh demand expectation from people. So let's say for example I would actually put out the taxi service first. Um I need to have some time to be able to produce these aircraft in good numbers for us to meet the demand for a uh city like Bangalore and let's say everybody gets on an app and then they want to have a plane uh you know come and pick them up and there aren't enough planes around there. Um so people will say oh this is a huge hoax right so they'll just write it off and um we're going to have a fiasco right right so

managing u customer expectations it's like super important and if I were to actually do that um and say unless I'm actually having about 100 planes built out I'm going to still be dormant and I will then I will launch with 100 planes to meet the expectations and stuff even then I may not meet the expectations I just want to be very clear that the demand for ad taxis is so huge that it's going to be extremely difficult for us to you know uh grow in that uh grow our curve there um meeting expectations and so on I think but that all of these things have actually been uh you know

gone through with an Uber or a blue smart or any of those people right so they have had initial hiccups if you look at Tesla's history they had initial hiccups on what kind of cars they were putting out and all that stuff so all of them actually go through this particular stage one hopefully A smart way to overcome that is to position yourself where the demand is not much that you're not able to that you are able to actually meet the demand much more effectively and probably have a a a sector or a segment where the price points can afford to be a little bit

more because people are willing to pay bit more to save uh save their uh you know or even the government is actually supporting it let us say right I mean it's not about just the rich people who can who can spend the money sort of thing But increasingly electric ambulances the EV dolls that we making can be made affordable for pretty much everybody if the government were to step in. So all of this put together uh it makes a lot of sense for us to actually go for our ambulances even ahead of uh our taxis and win like the social trust uh before we can actually say hey let's

actually have some comfort rides. No, exactly. In fact, if I'm not wrong, 787 milites. 788. 788 for all the number of districts in the country. Correct. Yeah. Fantastic. And when do we see the first one deployed? Oh, we expect by early 2027 about uh little less than a couple of years from now is what we're expecting optimistically. Okay. Right. But give or take a few months. Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. In fact, the partnership with EAC ETAC will also I'm hoping as to as per my research and what I've read in the in the you know editorials outside will help in making

sure that that infrastructure availability will absolutely so u in fact uh what I would encourage you and the viewers to actually follow is what the government is doing about these things and it's pretty smart. M um so early in September they actually released the regulations for not only the aircraft certification that we have to go through and so now we have like a very clear path of certification to follow the standards that we need to um to get the certification done. Prior prior to that we were thinking do I have to actually follow a European standard

or do I have to follow an American standard and so on. So the government actually came up with a very good uh plan for putting both of both of them together so that we have standards that will be acceptable to both Europe and US if you want to actually position ourselves to export our product right and also to meet those standards for the Indian market itself. But the other thing that they did in the context of the question that you're uh raising is they also actually put out standards for the vertip ports where where we would land these aircraft and both of these

are long lead items to solve this entire problem. uh we have to build the infrastructure just as well as we building and testing and certifying the plane. Um so those regulations are out so that we can now start building the body ports in different places. Uh so think about that ambulances itself just to dial back to to that particular use case. It's not sufficient that we actually have landing sites on top of hospitals or around the hospitals but where will the patient get picked up from right? So you you don't expect uh you know the patient has to go to the

hospital that means that we need to actually have vertiports around the city or around around the villages or whatever uh locations that we are talking about to pick up patients from right so um so the the infrastructure development is just as important as aircraft development right that's amazing and and very very necessary as well in the decade from now do you do you foresee uh you know the challenges in terms of air traffic yes so that's that's interesting thing right so I did ask the uh the DGCA uh on um why are they actually not doing the air traffic

control anytime soon? Uh in fact but after the uh the um the the reports and the aircraft standards they are now working on pilot training standards as well as MRO standards maintenance repair and overall uh standards uh because they think that that will actually be the next bottlenecks to solve for. Um so if I have the if I have the aircraft, I have the landing sites, I still need the pilots, right? So I need to actually get these pilot standards, get pilots trained uh during a certain time frame before the aircrafts are ready and so on. uh but um the the the DGCA is you

know very clear that uh in the initial period we don't expect uh lots of aircraft to be there and we know how to operate helicopters today and so we can actually use those uh an operating procedures uh to handle the kind of traffic that we will see but uh we will pretty soon get into traffic management uh rules for u handling larger traffic and and and what I expect is that the DGCA will probably do this sooner than uh you know expected. So we they will not wait for uh us to actually use helicopter rules. The we will actually be looking at um newer traffic rules for

this sooner than um you know uh even the first aircraft gets out of gets up in the sky. That's amazing to hear because in the recent uh couple of months there have been a bunch of incidents that have happened in US. Uh could be the air controller issues uh that you know they were not man effectively or they could be because of the rules that were not being deployed or followed meaningfully. I do not know because there's a lot of investigation going on but uh you know you foresee or you expect that you know once you start seeing skies full of flying taxis flying ambulances. So we

will we will actually get into a lot more precision about air traffic control. Um today's air traffic control is about what's called as waypoint navigation. So the ATC essentially informs the pilot to touch base across multiple airports where there are ATC's. Um so that the the baton for air traffic control actually gets passed from one ATC to another. And then of course we now have software that basically where the way points are keyed in the the the path is actually planned across all of those waypoints and all of this stuff. All all that stuff exists today. But

what we are talking about is actually one level higher where we will say the exact coordinates of every point along the trajectory will have to be mapped ahead of when you take off until you land. And we want the aircraft to follow exactly the same trajectory like the way we see rockets do. M so if we are able to actually get to that level of precision instead of just point you know fixing only way points so in the city for example how do you do way points there is only one ATC that's actually looking at the whole thing or you need to actually distribute the ATC but that

distribution of ATC will have to be virtual as opposed to you know man right and u uh you can't basically say you know take way points across Jayagar BMT layout or whatever it is right uh you have to actually say this is your path. Yeah. And you have to actually exactly follow this path. So we will get to that level of precision which means that we will have paths that do not intersect with each other. We have sufficient clearances and all of these things will have to be figured out ahead of every plane taking off. Makes sense, right? So the thing about uh aviation, I think

I've mentioned this several times. Um takeoff is optional, landing is mandatory, right? Uh so that means that we have to make sure if you think about it, it's kind of funny, right? But we're dead serious about it. Yeah. Right. So um we have to be sure that we will actually be able to land once you take off. That means uh there is no ETA creep that I call that happens in Bangalore. Yeah. You take off, you know exactly when you're going to land, exactly how you're going to follow what path. Everything is actually determined beforehand. That's when you actually get

into the aircraft and take off. Makes a lot of sense. In fact reminded me of a very interesting episode that happened with Ryan. I was flying over the Alps long ago, more than a decade ago, and the pilot and his sense of humor announced that uh it is a very lowcost airlines, right? I know. I know. Yeah. So, he said that 95% of our flights land. Oh my god. And we're going over the Alps and he says 95% of our flights land. And that's the first time I was flying right like what what happens in remaining 5%? And there was 10 second pause and those were probably the

longest 10 seconds I felt when I was staying in you know back back in the day. And then he said on time. Cool. I was like oh god that was not funny but that's not funny. Right. That's fantastic. I think I'm I'm so bullish about what the e-plane company is going to do for the country and for the globe at large as well. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of uh foreign countries going to be very interested in some of the applications that the e plane company is getting into and how they can you know deploy some of these uh EV talls and other kind of craft aircrafts

etc into into their uh environments too. So all the best for that. Thank you so much. But I'm going to also take a few more minutes of your time to ask you some rapid fire questions. There's no podcast that's complete without rapid fire. Whatever that is. Awesome. Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to take this liberty to get those answers. Is this an exam? No, but I I think I'm I'm going to love the answers. I'm actually very very very excited about hearing from you. Let me try. Uh Lon Shots by Safi Ball or Heroglyph, Stories and Visions for a Better Future by Neil Stephvenson. Which

would you choose? I don't I have no idea about either of them. Okay. Okay. What other science fiction ideas are you very fascinated by? Uh oh. the the real science fiction idea that I'm fascinated by at the moment is teleportation right and and I think it is still in the realm of science fiction uh but there are clues to cracking it um maybe we will crack it soon but it's still a science fiction teleportation is what I think about everything else that you may think is science fiction I I think it's actually in the realm of uh doable and

therefore I don't think it as science fiction brilliant so so happy to hear that do we settle on Mars when do you think we'll settle on Mars Do you think we can settle on Mars? Oh yes indeed. Um emphatic u so there is so for for for those who are like the mar Mars afficionados if you will we have a definite plan to do it. U so it's I mean I don't I'm not part of any secret society or something but but people who are actually clued into how to do this there is actually a definite plan to do this. Oh fantastic. So we we will do it. Yeah. But you're definitely a believer.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean it's it's a matter of time. Um and and it could happen in the next 15 years perhaps. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's that's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. If your life was a movie, what would it be called? Well, I I did think about once I was thinking about a uh a a a title of a book. Mhm. Uh and um uh and I and I felt it would be uh titled as uh Alone in a Crowd. H Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. any podcast that you really like or listen to? Uh, no. I don't really have time for most of the podcasts.

Have you seen a show called as the Rocket Boys on Dr. Bhava, Dr. Sarah and Dr. Kalam? Yeah. Do you do you you know did you like it? Did you find it uh realistic? Uh I mean there's a there's always a tinge of realism as well as a tinge of uh what should I say? Creative liberties. Yeah, creative liberties. That's a that's a right right phrase perhaps. uh but I think all of these things need to be appreciated. Yeah. So whatever it is we need appreciated. Uh it's important to actually bring all these people all these personalities to the to the common audience. Um yeah so

any amount of creative liberties is is okay. Yeah I I love that. I I loved I love that show. Uh yeah indeed. Yeah brilliant. I mean yes there are creative liberties but I felt so charged about those. So the reason why I said creative liberties is because I am actually privy to some of the u inner details of how they had worked and what are the situations they faced. So I do know uh what it is versus what they what they portrayed. Uh but um it doesn't matter. Yeah. The fact that you loved it is actually what what's important. Yeah. Thank you. Who inspires you? Any person

alive or deceased? Oh um multiple people. So and and multiple uh times at multiple times. So hard to hard to tell. Um yeah and and then uh after all these things the rational mind that I am uh I I I should I'm like I should be my own right. Yeah. So yeah amazing. Uh one last question. How does one join uh the brainstorming club with you? The late night brainstorming club about going to Mars or some of these exponential technologies and the use cases. How does one join that? I I'm not sure if I qualify, but if I could, what what would

I do? We don't really have a club as such. I think I'm I'm I respond to pretty much everybody that uh sends me a WhatsApp message. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for that. Brilliant. Brilliant uh to understand so much uh in such a short period of time from you, sir. Uh lovely to have you on the show. And on that note, I am going to give you a hamper. Uh oh, nice. Thank you so much. It's a personalized hamper for you. Okay. Uh by sponsored by Copic Designs. They personalize they're into corporate gifting and they do a lot of personalizations. So this is for you.

Thank you so much for taking our time. Folks in the audience who heard Dr. Professor Satya Chakraarti talk about a wide array of topics including what he says is not science fiction. All of us may think it's science fiction. It's not. Please let us know how you felt about the episode. I was mind blown. I was super excited. I don't want to let him go but the the episode comes to end. Thank you so much. Do share your suggestions over comments and do show your love. Thank you. Thanks a [Music] [Music]

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