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Havish Gupta
Figuring Out • 4d
College Projects That Made Millions – ideaForge Remember that drone from the movie 3 Idiots? Well, that wasn't built by Joy, it was built by Rahul Singh. Rahul made this during his IITB days, and after completing his BTech, he started ideaForge in 2007 along with his two IITB friends namely Ankit Mehta and Ashish Bhat. ideaForge's first customer was the Ministry of Defence itself. Its first product was Netra 1, a drone capable of monitoring hard-to-reach places whose first notable use case was in the Uttarakhand floods in 2013, where it was used to locate survivors. This was followed by a variety of drone series for different use cases. For eg: Switch: A fixed-wing drone, almost like a toy plane, used for high-altitude missions Q Series: Used for surveillance and 3D mapping. Along with that, they also built drones specifically for logistics, defense and more. In 2016, they raised their Series A round, securing $10M from WRV, Infosys, and Indus Age. Fast forward to 2023, they finally IPOed, raising $70 Million andreaching a valuation of $625M on the first trading day. Their IPO was 106x over-subscribed ☠️ In the same year, they partnered with American startup Vantage Robotics to export drones to the US and other NATO countries. Today, ideaForge is a $182 Million company (down 60% from peak), making $38 million in revenue, profitable, and holding a 50% market share in India’s defense drone sector.
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