Terra Drone, a Tokyo-based Drone and Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technology company, announced that it has $70M in a Series B funding round led by Mitsui Corporation.
Other investors, including SBI Investment, Tokyu Land Corporation, Kyushu Electric Power, Seika Corporation, Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN), and existing investor Venture Lab, also participated in the round.
The announcement comes one year after raising $14.4M in Series A funding in February 2021. To date, the Japanese company has raised $83M in funding.
What does Terra Drone solve?
The airspace is getting more crowded as the years pass by. Currently, there is an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and UAM operations.
Here’s where Terra Drone aims to capitalise on the opportunity by building the digital infrastructure in the sky.
Enhancing safety and efficiency
Founded by Toru Tokushige in 2016, Terra Drone provides drone hardware and cloud-based software for survey and inspection like Terra Lidar and thickness measurement by ultrasonic NDT.
The company is working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to coordinate flight management of both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.
In the drone inspection vertical, Netherlands-based group company Terra Inspectioneering is serving Oil and Gas production and processing companies such as Shell, BASF, and Bunge.
UT drone is a patented drone that can conduct UT (Ultrasonic Thickness) measurements. These drones are used to execute inspections for storage tanks, chimneys, boilers/Incinerators, and vessels. Terra 3D Inspect is a fully cloud-based platform for industrial inspection data.
In Southeast Asia, the company offers survey, inspection, and surveillance services through group company Terra Drone Indonesia.
Terra Drone has a significant track record conducting LiDAR surveys. Combining the operational excellence in both data capturing and processing/analysing, Terra Drone delivers quality data to the clients.The clients include Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and AECOM.
Terra Drone is working on enhancing safety and efficiency in many other industries by implementing drone-based solutions worldwide.
The drone regulations are constantly evolving globally and are expected to increase over the coming years. C-Astral, a group company of Terra Drone, provides long-endurance fixed wings, which are used for activities such as pipeline monitoring, forest fire detection, and border controls.
“A focus on increasing recurring revenue through the sale of survey-grade hardware and cloud-based software such as Terra LiDAR; providing specialized solutions such as ultrasonic thickness (UT) measurements and non-destructive testing (NDT) using drones through Terra Inspectioneering, and a strategic consolidation of overseas business has made us well-positioned for success. With this latest round of funding, we will be able to scale up operations and innovate faster,” Tokushige says.