Vecros

Prem Sai, one of the co-founders of Vecros, was pursuing engineering at IIT Delhi when he observed that a majority of drones in India rely on GPS technology for their operation. However, the challenge inherent in GPS-enabled drones lies in their susceptibility to GPS jamming and spoofing. Besta Prem Sai is Season 3's most academically grounded deep-tech founder an IIT Delhi Engineering Physics student from Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, who identified while still in college that GPS-dependent drones had a fundamental vulnerability (GPS jamming and spoofing could render them useless in the exact environments where they were most needed), and spent years developing autonomous navigation systems that operated without GPS entirely. Rajeshree is also a BTech graduate from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology. She had an interest in Drones and Robotics and was a team member of their Drone Team. She met with Besta on LinkedIn and became part of VECROS.

ATHERA is engineered for environments where autonomy must operate reliably over long durations and across wide areas. Large outdoor sites, ports, construction zones, perimeters, are too big to monitor manually and too dynamic to rely on static cameras. ATHERA flies them continuously, building a live operational picture with minimal pilot inputs. Vecros is India's only autonomous spatial AI drone company, building self-flying drones that navigate, map, inspect, and report without human intervention using onboard AI, computer vision, and sensor fusion (LiDAR, vision, IMU) rather than GPS. Unlike conventional drones that require a human pilot and GPS signal, ATHERA creates its own live spatial map of the environment, plans routes autonomously, avoids obstacles in 360 degrees, and executes missions at the edge without manual control.

Amount Asked: ₹1 crore Equity Offered: 2.5% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹40 crore

The pitch started with a drone demo, which was going well until a small accident happened where the drone broke down. Besta and Rajeshree opened Season 3 Episode 10 with Season 3's most technically ambitious live product demonstration: flying ATHERA autonomously in the Shark Tank studio. The drone demonstration was going smoothly, showcasing ATHERA's obstacle avoidance and autonomous navigation, until a small accident caused the drone to break down mid-flight. The crash was Season 3's most commercially nerve-wracking product demonstration failure, but the founders handled it with composure.

Namita Thapar explored the founders' backgrounds and the business genesis. Deepinder Goyal (Zomato guest Shark) inquired about previous funding rounds and understood the deep-tech nature. He did not invest, likely viewing the pre-revenue, capital-intensive hardware development as outside his consumer tech investment comfort zone. Anupam Mittal suggested the founders partner with a technology commercialisation organisation and focus on perfecting the technology rather than building a services setup simultaneously. He exited but his advice was the most strategically specific of the episode. Vineeta Singh did not make an offer. The autonomous drone sector sits entirely outside SUGAR Cosmetics' consumer brand expertise. Aman Gupta was the most personally moved by the founders' passion and small-town-to-IIT-Delhi journey.

After all the discussions, Vecros received only one investment offer from Aman Gupta which they accepted after a counteroffer. Vecros closed a deal of ₹20 lakhs for 1% equity with ₹80 lakhs debt at 10% interest for 3 years. Aman's initial offer was ₹10 lakhs for 1% equity plus ₹80 lakhs debt. The founders countered, and the equity portion was revised upward to ₹20 lakhs for 1% equity while the debt remained at ₹80 lakhs at 10% for 3 years. Total investment: ₹1 crore (matching the founders' original capital ask) at ₹20 crore implied valuation (half of the founders' ₹40 crore ask). The heavy debt structure reflected Aman's risk management approach for a pre-revenue deep-tech company.

Besta Prem Sai and Rajeshree Deotalu accepted Aman Gupta's offer of ₹20 lakhs for 1% equity plus ₹80 lakhs debt at 10% interest for 3 years, valuing Vecros at ₹20 crore. The deal matched the founders' total capital requirement (₹1 crore) but structured 80% as debt rather than equity, reflecting the pre-revenue company's risk profile. Aman's consumer electronics hardware expertise (boAt's product design, manufacturing, and supply chain capabilities) was the most commercially applicable Shark skillset for a hardware drone company.

Beyond the Shark Tank spotlight, Vecros continued to build its product roadmap with a strong focus on autonomy-first design. Alongside Aethera, the team began working on Jasper, a compact autonomous drone concept designed for enclosed and indoor spaces. VECROS met with Aman Gupta after the pitch aired. Vecros continues developing its autonomous drone platform post-Shark Tank. The product roadmap has expanded from ATHERA (outdoor autonomous drone) to include JASPER (indoor autonomous drone for warehouses and confined spaces) and JETCORE-FC (Made-in-India autonomy compute hardware). The company has secured $250K in total funding from 13 investors. Vecros stands as an example of how Indian deep-tech startups are redefining drones, not merely as flying machines, but as intelligent systems. The defence and public safety applications of ATHERA's GPS-denied autonomous navigation represent the most commercially significant growth vector post-Shark Tank.