Zoho invests in drone startup Yali Aerospace

Software-as-a-service (Saas) firm Zoho Corp. has invested in Tanjavur, Tamil Nadu-based drone startup Yali Aerospace, Zoho chief executive Sridhar Vembu said on Tuesday.

Vembu, who made the announcement on X (formerly Twitter), did not disclose the financial details.

“We are happy to announce our investment in Yali Aerospace, a drone startup based in Tanjavur led by the husband and wife team of Dinesh Baluraj and Anugraha. They returned from the Netherlands to their hometown of Tanjavur to start this,” Vembu said in the post on X.

“They have built a fixed-wing drone with vertical take off and landing, solving the problem of delivering medicines and organs to remote hospitals, up to a range of 150km, with a payload of up to 7kg, max speed of 155km/hr,” he added.

Yali Aerospace CEO Baluraj told Press Insider that he would use the investment to develop and deploy his drones in India and other regions, adding that he is in talks with companies in Africa and Europe to deploy his fixed-wing drones.

Haunted by a childhood memory of a mother unable to save her two children due to a lack of medicines at a primary health care unit, Baluraj founded Yali Aerospace in Tamil Nadu two years ago.

His company provides drone solutions for medical, surveillance, and logistics to save lives.

He aims to deliver medical supplies within 20 minutes through the ‘Yali Network Bridge,’ a system that includes a drone station and software enabling a single pilot to control multiple drones.

The network connects hospitals, facilitating the transport of supplies, organs, and critical medical equipment between various locations.

Implementing the Yali Network bridge in government and private hospitals will enable seamless delivery of medical supplies by Yali drones to hard-to-reach areas, a note on Baluraj’s website said.