Indian startup Jeh Aerospace founders Vishal Sanghavi and Venkatesh Mudragalla have had a front row seat to the commercial aircraft sector and its growing production bottleneck.
The two former Tata Group executives spent close to two decades in different positions at the company and worked on projects that included participation from global aerospace companies, including Boeing, Sikorsky, and Lockheed Martin.
Now, armed with $11 million in Series A funding, the pair are working to ease global supply chain bottlenecks by scaling the production of metallic components for aero engines and aerostructures, which it then sells to U.S.-based Tier 1 suppliers that work with commercial aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing.
And they plan to help India become a destination for aerospace component manufacturing in the process.
“At Tatas, we unlocked India’s potential for these large OEMs, Boeing, Airbus, Sikorsky, and GE [General Electric], but we wanted Jeh Aerospace to unlock India’s potential for the large Tier 1 and Tier 2 manufacturers in the supply chain,” said Sanghavi, who is also CEO at Jeh.
Jeh Aerospace, which is headquartered in Atlanta to better access its U.S. customer base, has a 60,000-square-foot software-based, precision manufacturing facility is in the Southern Indian city of Hyderabad. The three-year-old startup has combined precision machinery, robotics, and IoT devices to slash product introduction lead times from the industry’s traditional 15-week timeline to 15 days.
Jeh Aerospace’s software-defined manufacturing approach helps bring predictability and dynamic scheduling to allow offering a consistent supply to customers with no compromises on quality, Sanghavi said.
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And it seems VCs and strategic investors are interested in Jeh Aerospace’s pitch.
The Series A round was led by Elevation Capital, with participation from General Catalyst. With the infusion of the new capital, Jeh Aerospace has raised about $15 million in total from institutional venture capital firms. The VC fresh funding comes less than a month after the startup received an undisclosed strategic investment from IndiGo Ventures, a corporate venture capital arm of Indian carrier IndiGo.
Ashray Iyengar, principal at Elevation Capital, said the company “built a truly differentiated approach to aerospace manufacturing.”
Aircraft production bottleneck
Global air traffic demand rose 10.4% year-over-year in 2024, surpassing 2019 levels by 3.8%, per the International Air Transport Association data released earlier this year.
The rebound has spurred airlines to expand fleets, pushing up orders even as the industry grapples with talent and production bottlenecks, as Deloitte notes in a recent report. Tier 1 suppliers are facing extended lead times as the commercial aircraft backlog reaches a record nearly 15,700 units, according to McKinsey.
Jeh Aerospace’s founders believe using technology to scale production of metallic components for aero engines and aerostructures will unplug that bottleneck. That premise has shaped how Sanghavi, the former chief operating officer at Tata Boeing Aerospace, and Mudragalla have built its 100-person workforce, team of advisers, and business model.
Instead of working directly with OEMs like Airbus and Boeing, which makes makes 30% of commercial aircraft, Jeh Aerospace deliberately decided to tap Tier 1 and Tier 2 manufacturers, Sanghavi told TechCrunch, adding this group makes 60% to 70% of aircraft.
The startup currently has half a dozen paying customers, including Vermont-based GS Precision and Ohio-headquartered RH Aero. Sanghavi said each of these customers is a “high dollar, high ARR customer,” and they have the potential to become large accounts in the next one to two years.
“What we believe is that to work with lesser, but better customers, not to have a transactional relationship, but a far deeper and meaningful relationship. So, we are also very, very focused on not having too many customers,” he said. “The business doesn’t need too many customers because you can really scale with few customers very fast and very quickly.”
The company has also assembled an advisory team with deep ties to commercial aircraft OEMS. The startup counts former Boeing India President Pratyush (Prat) Kumar and former Airbus India CEO and Managing Director Dwaraka Srinivasan among its early advisors and backers.
Jeh Aerospace has made notable manufacturing and financial progress in its short life.
Since its $2.75 million seed round in January last year, Jeh Aerospace says it has delivered more than 100,000 flight-critical components and tools on time. The startup has also established a machine capacity exceeding 250,000 hours annually.
In the last financial year, the startup reached $6 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) and achieved profitability after taxes. Sanghavi told TechCrunch that it projects a 3x to 4x increase in its ARR this year and also boasts an order book worth $100 million.
The company plans to use the new $11 million in capital to scale its manufacturing and inspection capabilities by investing in next-generation digital production technologies, Sanghavi said.
The Jeh Aerospace co-founders see an opportunity to bring more local manufacturing to India and trengthen the country’s position on the global aerospace map, much like its recent emergence as a hub for iPhone production.
India already plays a growing role in aerospace manufacturing, with Airbus sourcing $1.4 billion worth of components annually from the country and targeting $2 billion by 2030. Boeing, for its part, is aiming for a $1.3 billion annual spend and announced its plans to invest $200 million in a new engineering and technology center in Bengaluru in 2023. Still, the South Asian nation has yet to achieve large-scale success in aerospace component manufacturing — a gap companies like Jeh Aerospace are hoping to fill.
Although few Indian startups operate in aerospace component manufacturing, the sector includes players like JJG Aero, which appears to be a peer to Jeh Aerospace based on industry positioning. Sanghavi declined to comment specifically on JJG and noted that his startup sees its primary competition among U.S.-based tier-2 suppliers.