Bhatnagar is an alum of IIT Roorkee and IIT Kanpur.
By Raif Karerat
Follow @ambazaarmag
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has invested in a next-generation transportation company cofounded by an Indian engineer, according to an announcement made on Wednesday.
Ankur Bhatnagar, an alumnus of both IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Kanpur, is the sole Indian cofounder of skyTran, a NASA Space Act company which is headquartered at the Nasa Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, according to the Economic Times.
Bhatnagar told ET that Schmidt has invested an in a Series A round through his venture capital fund, Innovation Endeavors, but declined to reveal the amount invested.
Business Insider India reported that skyTran has developed a “third-generation” Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) technology. With this technology, the firm is hoping to revolutionize the face of public transport across the globe.
In next two years, Bhatnagar is looking to enable a network of computer-controlled levitating “jet-like” vehicles that will transport passengers above surface traffic in India, making the country its first and largest market.
skyTran is in talks with various industrial groups and state governments and is eying the PRT opportunities in cities that includes Jaipur, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Kerala.
“The average speed of travel in cities is expected to be 120 km/hour. That means a user can expect to travel from Gurgaon to Noida in less than 25 minutes, for example. The speed of travel would be 250 km/hour on intercity routes. A journey between Delhi and Chandigarh or Delhi to Jaipur would just take an hour,” said Bhatnagar.
Schmidt isn’t the only American investor interested in seeing Bhatnagar’s vision for a more efficiently navigable future come to fruition. According to Business Insider, the nascent technology previously received funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.