German wingcopter xplorer capitaletheringtontechcrunch series#
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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