José Eduardo Brandão, CEO of SYNERJET, adds: “SYNERJET is very proud to be a Wingcopter Authorized Partner and new investor in Wingcopter. The region offers enormous growth opportunities for both companies and we look forward to scaling across the continent together”, comments Tom Plümmer, CEO of Wingcopter. Making this investment right after becoming our first Authorized Partner in Latin America shows that they understand the huge potential of what we are creating here at Wingcopter. “We would like to thank SYNERJET’s CEO José Brandão and the whole team for their trust in Wingcopter. SYNERJET joins existing investors DRONE FUND, Expa, Xplorer Capital, Futury Capital, Hessen Kapital III, and Corecam Capital Partners in the run-up of Wingcopter’s Series B investment round in 2022. The company will benefit from SYNERJET’s in-depth knowledge of the regulatory framework as well as its strong relationships and experience with local civil aviation authorities. For Wingcopter, the partnership represents an important gateway to the Latin American market and is a major milestone in its global expansion plans. As an Authorized Partner, SYNERJET wants to target drone operators, logistics companies, and providers in the healthcare industry. SYNERJET has made the investment shortly after joining Wingcopter’s Authorized Partner Program (WAPP), which allows companies to act as a distributor and local technical support provider for Wingcopter 198. The new funding follows recently announced investments from Japan-based DRONE FUND as well as UBER co-founder Garrett Camp’s Expa. The capital influx comes from SYNERJET Corp, a leading business aviation specialist in Latin America, with operations in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Panama, and Guatemala. Emissions are the other big selling point here, with the electric systems offering more efficiency than traditional ground transportation.German drone delivery pioneer Wingcopter has secured its next investment. The drones are controlled remotely by pilots who can monitor and fly up to 10 systems at once. The system can drop three individual packages, making it possible to perform multiple deliveries in a single flight. Early last year, the previously bootstrapped company announced a $22 million Series A, led by Silicon Valley VC Xplorer Capital. The startup’s primary offering is the Wingcopter 198, a large fixed-winged drone capable of transporting 13 pounds of payload up to 68 miles. Wingcopter was founded in 2017 by Plümmer, Jonathan Hesselbarth and Ansgar Kadura - a trio of then-university students. “Especially in remote areas with weak infrastructure and those areas that are additionally affected by droughts and other plagues, Wingcopter’s delivery drones will build an air bridge and provide food from the sky on a winch to exactly where it is needed.” “With the looming food crisis on the African continent triggered by the war in Ukraine, we see great potential and strong social impact that drone-delivery networks can bring to people in all the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa by getting food to where it is needed most,” CEO Tom Plümmer told TechCrunch. and Malawi, and is planning to expand into different delivery categories, such as food. The company has already partnered with hospitals in the U.S. Various locales in Africa certainly make sense for such a rollout, with drones potentially offering faster access to important resources, including vaccines, medicines, lab samples and other key medical supplies. We’ve long suggested that such technologies might make more sense in remote areas, where traditional infrastructural issues present real barriers for delivery. While others, like Alphabet’s Wing, have seen some success in limited markets, plenty of questions remain around efficacy, congestion and regulation, among others. The deal sets the lofty goal of deploying 12,000 of Wingcopter’s 198 drone systems over the course of the next 5 years.ĭrone delivery has largely been a non-starter for a number of companies, including Amazon. Wingcopter this week announced a partnership with Continental Drones designed to establish a massive delivery network spanning 49 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa.
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