Global aerospace accelerator, Airbus BizLab is eyeing to acquire the stake in Indian startups that it has been working with. However, there has not been any confirmation regarding this news.
Earlier, Airbus subsidiaries, Navblue and Aerial signed deals with three Indian startups, accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, in the segments of aeronautical data services, flight operations and imagery.
If and when an equity participation takes place, it will be a departure from Airbus BizLab’s usual way of funding the startups. This is only limited to their business initiatives proofs of concepts. BizLab funds each proof of concept with a maximum of 50,000 euro (Rs 39,80,000).
Since the past three years, BizLab has boosted up 50 startups and 40 internal projects, which have raised a combined $19.5 million (Rs 155.30 crore). It offers facilities in Toulouse, France and Hamburg, Germany apart from the one in Bengaluru and recently opened one in Madrid, Spain.
Navblue, which is Airbus’ solutions provider for flight operations and air traffic management, had earlier signed up Stelae Technologies based in Bengaluru for the purpose of working for better solutions in aeronautical data services.
It also extended the contract with EFlight, a startup it brought on board last year. The third deal was signed between Aerial, that is Airbus’ new commercial drone startup and Airpix which is based in Mumbai to provide geo-analytic solutions and imagery services in India.
The BizLab programme has been for aerospace and other startups with products/solutions that can be adapted for in segments such as robotics, internet of things, data analytics, virtual/augmented reality, supply chain, fintech, gaming and manufacturing. BizLab supports the startups in a six-month acceleration programme.