Drone startup Wingtra takes off vertically with extra $5.8M in funding

In addition to the extra funding, Wingtra reached other milestones including the overachieved company revenue targets, even before counting a year to the first sale in February 2017. These accomplishments support the acceleration of market entry and the expansion to the international markets.

With the market for drones expected to reach $100BN till the end of 2020, as reported by Goldman Sachs, Wingtra anticipates greater success in the years to come.  Basil Weibel CEO Wingtra comments on the market development: “we see strong traction in the area of professional drones and especially in our segment – the fully autonomous, high coverage and “heavy” payload aerial robots. We see distributors on all continents getting ready to sell the next generation of aerial robots and therefore extend their product portfolio with more powerful and specialized drones.”

Until now, public drone companies have not found a way to bridge the gap between multirotors and fixed-wing drones. Wingtra comes to the market with a new smart VTOL technology that solves most of existing customer's' pain points. On the contrary to the majority of the competitors, WingtraOne drone takes off and lands as a multicopter but flies in the air as a fixed wing aircraft. This technology eliminates the risk of damaging the aircraft while landing, allows the drone to carry heavier and thus much better cameras (for instance 40MP Sony RX1RII) and allows mapping of even the most complicated terrains.

WingtraOne is managed through its mission planning software WingtraPilot and collects survey grade aerial data that can be further post processed into high resolution 2D maps (orthomosaics) and 3D models used in surveying, mapping, construction, forestry, agriculture and other industries.

About Wingtra
Founded as a spin-off from world’s leading engineering school ETH Zurich, Wingtra is led by three entrepreneurs – Basil Weibel, Maximilian Boosfeld and Elias Kleimann. In the last 4 years the three founders assembled a team of 40 passionate “Wingranauts". The company is headquartered in Zurich.

(ran)