Tokyo-based urban air mobility tech startup Terra Drone raises $70M in Series B funding to accelerate growth

We covered Terra Drone Corporation a year ago after the Tokyo, Japan-based drone and urban air mobility (UAM) tech startup closed a $14.4 million (JPY 1.5 billion) in Series A funding round to further develop technologies and grow the client base.

Today, Terra Drone announced it has raised $70 million (8 billion Japanese yen) in Series B funding with investments from Mitsui & Co., Ltd., SBI Investment Co., Ltd., Tokyu Land Corporation, Kyushu Electric Power T&D, and Seika Corporation. The round brings the company’s total funding to $83 million since its inception six years ago.

Other backers of the round include Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN) – a public-private infrastructure fund by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) – to the newly established joint venture, as well as participation from existing investor Venture Lab Investment.

Founded in 2016, the Tokyo, Japan-based Terra Drone provides innovative enterprise drone services for oil and gas, utilities, renewables, mining, construction, and GIS sectors, among others. Terra Drone provides end-to-end solutions specializing in each sector by using high-performance hardware, cutting-edge software, and customizable drone traffic management systems (UTM).

“Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever, but most companies today are concentrating only on hardware development,” says Toru Tokushige, Founder and CEO of Terra Drone. “There’s an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and UAM operations, and Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky.”

To that end, Terra Drone has been working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to coordinate flight management of both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

Meanwhile, 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. In Southeast Asia, Terra Drone offers survey, inspection, and surveillance services through group company Terra Drone Indonesia whose clients include Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and AECOM.

The company is further enhancing safety and efficiency in many other industries by implementing drone-based solutions worldwide.

“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.

Terra Drone has experienced explosive growth since 2018. Today, Terra Drone is the world’s largest provider of industrial drone solutions, with offices throughout Japan, including its Tokyo headquarters, and overseas operations primarily in Europe and Southeast Asia. The company was ranked No. 1 in the world in the “Drone Services Companies Worldwide Ranking 2020” by Drone Industry Insights, a global drone market research organization