ⓘ Featured image: Photo by Inmortal Producciones from Pexels
TechEagle, a Lucknow-based drone startup which was acquihired by the foodtech giant Zomato has got its acquisition deal cancelled. The six-member team of TechEagle including the founder & CEO, Vikram Singh Meena has resigned from Zomato on April 30 – reported by MediaNama.
Zomato in a statement said that the two companies are not aligned in terms of future goals.
A person associated with Zomato told MediaNama,
“TechEagle’s team initially got a lot of freedom to work, but after some time it became difficult for them to scale the technology, majorly because of funding restrictions. Zomato only wanted to focus on drone deliveries in the Indian market, and not overseas, but TechEagle wanted to do it in countries where Zomato offers its Gold service,”
Zomato Gold is available in India and eight other countries including UAE, Australia, Indonesia, Turkey, and New Zealand.
In a statement to Entrackr, a Zomato spokesperson said,
“While we are thankful to Vikram for building a strong engineering foundation for our drones team at Zomato, we are no longer aligned about our future goals and have decided to operate as separate entities. Vikram and his team are supremely talented and we wish nothing but the best for them,”
Vikram Singh Meena talked about the financial restrictions and revealed that Zomato was not willing to invest more in R&D. And due to the regulatory hurdles, Zomato felt that food delivery via drones won’t happen in the near future. He also stated that Zomato wasn’t in favour of leveraging drones outside the food space,
“Zomato at its core is food-centric and doesn’t want to enter into healthcare and essentials delivery,” he added. “This vision misalignment was the core reason why TechEagle decided to come out of Zomato,”
About TechEagle
TechEagle was founded by IIT-Kanpur alumni Vikram Singh Meena to offer custom-made drones capable of carrying 5 kg uploads. The company claims that it has on-boarded 25 drones and completed 2,250 flight hours and traveled 78,750 km distance until now.
