Malaysia’s drone-based asset management startup Aerodyne raises funding

Drone-powered asset management solutions provider Aerodyne has added North Summit Capital, Arc Ventures, and Leave a Nest as its key strategic partners and investors in the second round of Series B funding, supporting its plan to enter new APAC markets such as China, India, and Japan.

The company said that it will use the funding to also focus on data technology advancement, hiring talent globally. and continuing to expand into Aerodyne’s key global markets such as Japan, the US, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

The partnerships with VC firms operated in respective countries, the startup noted, are in line with its global expansion strategy of investing heavily in data technology advancement.

In China, Aerodyne scores a partnership with North Summit Capital to help penetrate the market and extend Aerodyne’s technological edge.

North Summit Capital is founded by Dr. Wanli Min, who previously was the Vice President and Chief Machine Intelligence Scientist of Alibaba Cloud and who also has had stints at IBM and Google.

Partnering the VC will enable Aerodyne in deepening its AI-enabled automation and machine learning capabilities into current solutions and offerings, cloud computing ecosystem, DT^2, as well as expedite research and development iterations and resolve service efficiency bottleneck.

Meanwhile, in India, Aerodyne has partnered with Arc Ventures, which is co-founded by Arjun Aggarwal and Cibi K Chandran.

As India is a hugely diverse country and requires deep domain knowledge, Arc Ventures is able to offer Aerodyne an optimum market penetration.

In addition to that, Aerodyne, which has already expanded to Japan and South Korea through its previous investors, also strengthens its position in Japan through a partnership with Leave a Nest. It is an entity that connects startups, research institutes, and companies to create new businesses or explore new frontiers.

Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC)’s CEO, Surina Shukri commended Aerodyne, a member of MDEC’s GAIN Programme, for being an exemplary homegrown tech firm that is capable of deploying state-of-the-art drone-based solutions across vast industrial sectors all over the world.

“This latest expansion into China and India is a momentous achievement for not only the organisation but the nation as a whole,” said Surina.

Malaysian-headquartered Aerodyne was founded by Kamarul A Muhamad, who sits as Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of the company. It’s currently ranked third globally by Drone Industry Insights in its 2019 Drone Service Provider Ranking.

Aerodyne claimed to have presence in 25 countries and delivers AI-driven, drone-based enterprise-integrated managed solutions to the Oil & Gas, Power, Telecoms, Renewables, Construction, Agriculture and Infrastructure industries.