Aerospace startup Sarla Aviation, aiming to launch electric air taxis for local transportation by 2028, announced on Monday that it has begun ground testing for its taxi program at its manufacturing facility in Bengaluru.

The company announced that, as ground testing begins, its air taxi program progresses into its essential validation phase, transitioning firmly from digital concepts and small-scale laboratory experiments to testing with full-scale aircraft.

It further stated that this accomplishment positions India within a limited group of countries that are actively advancing next-generation vertical flight technologies on an industrial level.

The platform mentioned that it has secured a total of $13 million (approximately Rs 116 crore) to date through its Pre-Seed and Seed rounds in 2024, with a Series A round in January 2025 spearheaded by backers Accel and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath.

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In January this year, the platform revealed its prototype air taxi, Shunya, at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo, with intentions to launch electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft in Bengaluru by 2028.

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"Sarla Aviation has initiated ground testing for its half-sized (7.5-meter wingspan) eVTOL prototype, SYLLA SYL-X1, at the company's testing facility in Bengaluru," the company announced.

Boasting a wingspan of 7.5 meters, the SYL-X1 stands as the largest and most sophisticated private eVTOL demonstrator of its type presently being developed in India, it noted.

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Accomplished in around nine months of development and with a small portion of the funding usually needed for similar global initiatives, the milestone, according to the company, represents a degree of engineering scale, execution speed, and systems maturity that has not been showcased by any private aerospace firm in the nation before.

The existing demonstrator is a functional sub-scale aircraft, specifically designed to confirm structural performance, propulsion integration, and system-level safety framework at a significant scale.

 

In contrast to academic prototypes or small RC-scale platforms, SYL-X1 is intended for certification from the beginning, creating a direct connection to Sarla Aviation's 15-meter wingspan full-scale aircraft.