Drone Helicopter Manufacturer Velos Rotors Raises $2 Million Seed
Drones have certainly captured consumer interest. Still, their enterprise adoption has been lagging. The reasons are very practical – commercially available drones have limited performance in terms of payload and range, are overly noisy, cannot fly even under mild weather conditions and crash too often.
Such shortcomings largely stem from their shape and structure. Multicopters are inferior flying machines. Physics dictates that the thrust an aerial vehicle produces is proportional to the surface of its propeller. Multicopters use many small propellers that still cover a small surface, while requiring a lot of energy to rotate.
Aris Kolokythas, a senior electronics engineer with a lifelong passion for aviation, came up with these realisations a few years ago. He moved on to craft from the ground up a pioneering UAV that leverages the most robust form factor in aviation history – the helicopter.
Paired with his childhood friend and successful serial entrepreneur Tasso Argyros who served as the original angel investor in the company, he founded Velos Rotors to bring an industrial-grade UAV to the market and help push aviation forward. They were recently joined by Michael Seal, a US Navy veteran with a long track record in the industry.
Velos' full-electric, sub 55 lbs drone helicopters can consistently carry a 13 lb payload for 60 minutes with a 35 MPH cruise speed under pretty much any weather conditions (IP65). Its patented twin-engine UAV design offers industry-leading redundancy, reduces noise and vibration, and substantially enhances overall efficiency and performance.
Such specs and reliability open up new possibilities for fulfilling critical missions with valuable payloads further and faster than ever before. Velos has already delivered dozens of drone helicopters across the globe, that have amassed thousands of flying hours, to the excitement of their users.
The $2 million seed investment by Marathon will enable Velos to grow the organization towards further advancing its platform for cutting-edge use cases and scaling its manufacturing capacity to maintain its remarkable level of support as well as its track record of some of the fastest delivery times in the industry.
At Marathon, we are thrilled to work together with Aris, Michael, Tasso and team to bring meaningful innovation to the UAV market. Plus, if you are into aviation and want to make an impact with your work, Velos is the place to be!