Ankit Mehta, co-founder and CEO of ideaForge, gives all credit for his success to IIT Bombay where he studied for five years (integrated BTech and MTech in mechanical engineering). The institution gave him everything – the required expertise, friends, some of whom are co-founders of the company, and seed capital to many of his early ventures. More importantly, it gave wings to his dreams.
Just after getting into IIT in 2000, Mehta who belongs to Jodhpur started converting his ideas into prototypes and projects. By the end of his course, he had done over 20 hardware projects and even filed a patent for one. He took an active part in IIT Bombay’s innovation cell, which funded innovative ideas of students.
About ideaForge
Rahul Singh, currently co-founder and VP of engineering, ideaForge, had approached him with an idea to make a hovercraft and fly it over Powai Lake, adjoining the IIT Bombay campus. Both built a few hovercraft prototypes out of thermocol and within months, successfully flew one. This was in a way the beginning of what is today called ideaForge. Mehta and Singh then reached out to Ashish Bhat, also a student at IIT Bombay, and now co-founder and VP R&D, ideaForge, who was an electronics wizard to help them build it further. Once all of them realised they were able to easily build something at lab scale, there has been no stopping.
Mehta graduated in 2005, but there was still one year to go for Singh and Bhat to graduate and join him. So, in the meantime, he took up a consulting job in Pune for six months and used the money to work on the business. By then, Vipul Joshi, currently co-founder and CFO, and a childhood friend of Mehta, also joined them. “I was very confident that we could convert our ideas into reality at will. I also realised that not too many people have a love for hardware innovation. So, we stuck together,” Mehta says.
In February 2007, ideaForge was registered. But the original business idea was different. “I got a grant from the ‘Technopreneur promotion programme’ for the patent that I had filed when I was a student. It was a handheld, mechanically energy-generating device that could charge mobile phones and electronics off-grid.” The company was incubated at IIT Bombay and received its first seed capital from the college. Today, the firm counts institutional investors like Qualcomm Ventures and Infosys as its backers, and has so far raised $40.37 million.
From IIT, to the world
After incubation, the co-founders kept taking tech projects from IIT. In 2008, they helped IIT secure the top position in a global competition, which made the government labs in India recognise that there is a team in India that could build the autopilot technology from ground up. In 2008- 09, they delivered the world’s smallest and lightest autopilot to DRDO, at half the weight of a Guinness World record holder. Meanwhile, the chargers’ business turned out to be a high-volume, low-margin one and a slightly low-tech one too. So, the founders decided to drop that and take more autopilot technology-based projects.
A few months later, the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks happened, which made them understand the potential of drones further. They decided to build technology that could help our forces in such situations. In 2009, ideaForge launched its first quadcopter drone and in 2010, it made its first sales. Since then, the company has been building drones for defence, internal security, disaster management, agriculture and industrial applications.
While the firm sources certain components from outside India, its drones are designed, developed, and manufactured entirely in India, integrated with in-house built drone control software and solutions. “Almost all the defence and civil forces in the country use our technology,” says Mehta. Over the years, ideaForge’s missions have happened in the most extreme environments in the world, be it the Himalayas or deserts in Rajasthan.
Besides designing and manufacturing, the firm also offers end-to-end drone solutions, including training, drone-as-a-service and after-sales support. Its customers have done over 725,000 missions on its drones, with an ideaForge drone taking off every three minute. The firm has a subsidiary and a team in the US and has started exploring opportunities in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia through local partnerships.
From 2 kg to 50 kg, the firm is manufacturing many categories in-house and is now looking to build its additional categories, outside this range, from a 500 kg middle-mile logistics drone to a nano drone under 250 gm. The company has also made a strategic investment in California-based nano and micro UAV provider Vantage Robotics recently and is looking forward to more such partnerships.
ideaForge, which designs and manufactures high-performance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and solutions, holds 50% market share in an industry that is expected to touch $1.5-1.9 billion by next year. On a 161 crore revenue in FY25, it posted a loss of62 crore against a profit of `45.3 crore in FY24.
In July 2023, the Mumbai-based firm made its IPO debut, and this year, it made a noteworthy contribution to Operation Sindoor. Incidentally, the drone featured in the movie 3 Idiots was an early prototype developed by ideaForge.