Special Report: Indian firm Raphe mPhibr wins funding to advance UAV development

Raphe mPhibr's mR20 high-altitude logistics UAV. It can also be deployed for maritime resupply and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions. (Raphe mPhibr)

In June Indian aerospace company Raphe mPhibr secured INR8.5 billion (USD100 million) in funding to support its efforts to design and build unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

This funding, provided by US venture capitalist General Catalyst and others, will contribute to the Noida-based company's expanding UAV research, development, and production capabilities.

Raphe mPhibr already has an existing UAV profile. Its products include the mR20, which is described by the company as India's first UAV developed solely for high-altitude logistics; the multirole mR10 and its variants mR10-X8 and mR10-IC; the manportable Bharat; and the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fixed-wing Neeraj UAV.

On its website, Raphe mPhibr also lists various technology capabilities. These include lightweight carbon-fibre composites, an autonomous navigation system for spatial awareness through simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM); ground control technologies for UAVs; and simulation technologies to model flight patterns.

The company also says that its UAV swarm technology leverages collective intelligence and provides artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled automatic detection. The swarm system can operate up to 100 UAVs with 99.5% tracking precision and a 5 km peer communication range, it added.

Vivek Mishra, the CEO of Raphe mPhibr, told Janes in July that the funding, which has been received by the company in its entirety, will be directed primarily at scaling up the company's UAV research and manufacturing capabilities.

“This money [will] go towards building the research capabilities that we already have … [and] getting more machines for manufacturing. We are going deeper into materials, we are going deeper into electronics, and that entails getting machines,” he said.