A pointy increase in the number of personal vehicles and a decline in the use of public and non-motorized transport have resulted in increasing traffic congestion in India, the world’s most populous country, which also struggles with relatively narrower roads and insufficient parking spaces in cities. New Delhi recognizes these challenges and is looking for new ways to quickly meet them.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a September event that air taxis do will soon change into a “reality in India”, indicating the government’s interest in supporting the new mode of transport. Also the national aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation recently formulated rules regarding vertiports prepare the ground for air taxis.

The ePlane company I’m riding this wave.

The startup, founded in 2019 by IIT Madras aerospace engineering professor Satya Chakravarthy, is constructing an electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle called e200x, months after developing unmanned drones for transportation and camera applications. Chakravarthy has a strong pedigree: he is also a co-founder and advisor to Indian space tech startups including Agnikul and GalaxEye, in addition to Indian hyperloop-focused startup TuTr Hyperloop.

Chakravarthy told TechCrunch that ePlane has secured mental property rights while developing urban commuter and cargo aircraft that feature relatively low airspeed and a compact wingspan of 8 meters, as opposed to typical air taxis with wingspans of 12 to 16 meters. Thanks to this, it’ll give you the option to land in tight spaces and make many short trips – up to 60 a day – on a single charge, he says. It claims commuters would cut back their journey times by as much as 85%, at a cost lower than twice the fare they typically pay for an Uber ride.

Most eVTOL vehicles are currently multicopters similar to industrial drones, including air taxis equipped with spokes and vertical rotors. Chakravarthy said that while this configuration is easier to develop and implement in the market, it doesn’t allow for longer distances on a single battery charge. ePlane selected a lift-plus-cruise configuration, in which the vehicle has a winged architecture like a typical airplane, but with vertical, drone-like rotors.

“It has been proven that this configuration is actually very reliable because we’ve redundancy in terms of the vertical rotors carrying the weight of the aircraft, while the wings contribute to the gradual balancing of the weight in order that there is no lack of lift during the transition from vertical take-off and hover to flight forward,” he said.

The startup also developed a technology called synergistic lift, which uses vertical rotors even in forward flight to keep the wings sufficiently compact.

Chakravarthy told TechCrunch that ePlane produces aircraft components at its IIT Madras facility, including airframe parts, and designs seats and propellers. The startup outsources the cells but assembles the aircraft’s batteries in-house to manage the plane’s center of gravity.

The startup goals to commercialize its electric air taxi in mid-to-second half of 2026, after obtaining required certifications from Indian and global authorities and creating a prototype of the aircraft in the first half of 2025, Chakravarthy told TechCrunch.

Prior to testing the vehicle, ePlane raised $14 million in a Series B round co-led by Speciale Invest and Singaporean company Antares Ventures. Micelio Mobility, Naval Ravikant, Java Capital, Samarthya Investment Advisors, Redstart (from Naukri) and Anicut also participated in the equity-only round. The round valued the startup at $46 million post-money – greater than double its previous valuation of $21 million.

The fresh capital will help ePlane, which employs greater than 100 people, gain global regulatory certifications and expand its commercialization efforts.

India’s success has helped ePlane expand into other markets, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe.

“We work with the belief that in the future, what is good for India will be good for the world,” Chakravarthy said.

British consumer rights group ‘Which?’ files an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on behalf of roughly 40 million users of its iCloud cloud storage service.

The class motion lawsuitwhich is searching for £3 billion in damages (about $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), claims Apple broke competition rules by giving preferential treatment to its own cloud storage service and effectively forcing people to pay for iCloud after a “fraud ” prices.

“iOS has a monopoly and control over Apple’s operating systems, and it’s Apple’s responsibility not to make use of this dominance to realize an unfair advantage in related markets, resembling the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what happened,” the corporate wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

The lawsuit alleges that Apple encourages users of its devices to join iCloud for photo storage and other data storage purposes, while making it difficult for consumers to make use of alternative storage providers – including by stopping them from storing or creating all of their data. Back up your phone data to a third-party provider.

“iOS users will have to pay for the service when photos, notes, messages and other data exceed the free 5GB limit,” he noted.

The lawsuit also accuses Apple of overcharging British consumers for iCloud subscriptions as a consequence of a lack of competition. “Apple has increased the price of iCloud for UK consumers by 20% to 29% across all storage tiers in 2023.” – it said, adding that it was searching for compensation from all affected Apple customers and estimating that individual consumers could owe a mean of £70 (about $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.

An analogous lawsuit – arguing that Apple has unlawfully monopolized the cloud storage market – has been filed within the US in Marchand stays pending after the corporate didn’t throw it.

UK consumers agreed

A UK claim is made on an opt-out basis for UK based consumers who qualify for inclusion. Consumers who live outside the UK and consider they’re eligible must actively conform to participate.

Spokesman Tommy Handley told us that eligible Apple customers include “anyone who ‘acquired’ iCloud services, including non-paying users, within nine years of the Consumer Rights Act coming into force on October 1, 2015.”

Handley also confirmed that the £3 billion compensation figure takes under consideration potential cancellations, duplicates and mortality.

It is a not-for-profit organization, however the litigation is being funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), a major global litigation financier, which it says is committed to bringing the case to fruition.

At the identical time, it calls on Apple to settle the claim without having to go to court – offering refunds to consumers and making iOS available to offer users with a “real choice” of cloud services.

Commenting in a statement, Which chief executive Anabel Hoult said: “By making this claim, Which? shows large corporations like Apple that they can’t cheat British consumers without facing consequences. Taking this legal motion means we may help consumers get the redress they deserve, discourage similar behavior in the long run and create a higher, more competitive market.”

Assuming Apple doesn’t seek an out-of-court settlement, the subsequent stage of the dispute will rely on whether the CAT grants Which permission to act as a collective representative of consumers and allows the claim to be heard on a collective basis.

In recent years, there was a rise within the number of sophistication motion lawsuits against Big Tech following a wave of antitrust enforcement on either side of the Atlantic that continues to yield incomplete results and business impact.

In the UK, Apple was also the goal of a class motion lawsuit brought last 12 months on behalf of developers over App Store fees.

Also last 12 months, a separate lawsuit within the UK was filed against Apple and Amazon, accusing them of price collusion.

Silicon Valley battery startup Lyten announced today that it’s acquiring manufacturing assets from Northvolt, a cash-strapped Swedish battery maker.

As a part of the deal, Northvolt is selling manufacturing equipment the corporate inherited through its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, one other battery startup. Lyten may also take over the lease of the old Cuberg manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California. Lyten will invest $20 million next yr to expand its San Leandro facilities and existing operations in San Jose.

Neither Lyten nor Northvolt immediately responded to questions on the financial terms of the deal.

Unlike many other battery manufacturers, Lyten doesn’t use nickel, cobalt, manganese and even iron in its cathode materials. Instead, it uses low cost and abundant sulfur mixed with a graphene matrix. The anode side doesn’t use graphite, a surface-facing material export restrictions from China. The company claims that this mix creates cells which have the next energy density than nickel-manganese-cobalt cells, but are cheaper to provide than inexpensive lithium iron phosphate.

Northvolt has been having problems currently. The company struggled to ramp up production of lithium-ion batteries and failed to satisfy a big order from BMW, prompting the automaker to cancel a €2 billion contract.

To get monetary savings, the corporate announced in August that it could achieve this snapshot research and development on the Cuberg plant, shedding almost 200 employees. Then in September it said it was shedding a further 1,600 staff, or about 20% of its workforce, and that it had halted two planned factory expansions.

It is unclear whether cost cutting and the Lyten deal can be enough to assist Northvolt survive the approaching yr. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Northvolt needs to lift almost $1 billion to present itself some respiration room; According to reports, the corporate’s operations generate costs of roughly $100 million monthly.

While Northvolt is slipping, Lyten appears to be growing.

The San Jose-based startup plans to begin constructing a factory in Nevada next yr with a planned capability of 10 gigawatt hours. Once accomplished, the $1 billion facility will produce lithium-sulfur batteries for micro-mobility vehicles reminiscent of scooters and electric bicycles, and for defense and space applications reminiscent of drones and satellites. The company expects to come back online in 2027.

Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt’s Cuberg assets gives it equipment and space to provide as much as 200 megawatt-hours of lithium-sulfur batteries within the Bay Area. This should provide the corporate with some revenue while it prepares a bigger factory in Nevada.

According to PitchBook, Lyten has raised $476 million up to now at a $1.17 billion valuation, which incorporates a $200 million round that closed last yr.