Software major Infosys has said it has invested an undisclosed amount in Mumbai-based drone company ideaForge, which counts India’s armed and paramilitary forces as its biggest customers.
Infosys, which has made the investment through its innovation fund, says it plans to use ideaForge’s indigenous unmanned air vehicles and the data insights to offer industrial solutions to its global clients.
ideaForge’s UAVs, which have fully autonomous operation, high endurance, and image intelligence with live feed, have been used by the Indian Armed Forces for surveillance, crowd monitoring and rescue operations. These are also used by Gujarat Police, Maharashtra Police, BSF, NDRF and for commercial applications in verticals such as energy, utilities, telecom and agriculture. ideaForge incubated at IIT Bombay in 2007 and then expanded its business.
“ideaForge’s high performance UAVs, which have been designed and built in India, have significant potential in industrial use cases. We are looking forward to working with ideaForge and bringing their technology, expertise, and solutions to our clients to unlock new business insights from operational data that has previously been difficult to obtain,” said Ritika Suri, Executive Vice President & Global Head of Corporate Development & Ventures, Infosys.
WRV Capital and IndusAge Partners also participated in the round with Infosys, who have collectively invested about Rs 70 crore in the Mumbai firm.
“We are very excited to have Infosys as an investor and a partner for exploring UAV services and solutions for global customers. This partnership will play an important role in our industrial expansion to address a wide variety of data acquisition and analysis needs,” Ankit Mehta, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at ideaForge, said.
Last month, Infosys invested nearly Rs 14.5 crore in a Danish artificial intelligence startup UNSILO through its Innovation Fund.
Infosys has $ 500 million earmarked in the innovation fund to invest in startups that look at disruptive technologies.