Tata Elxsi and Sarla Aviation signed an MoU in Bengaluru on 1 September to put engineering muscle behind Shunya, a six-passenger-plus-pilot electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft that the companies describe as India’s first indigenous machine of its kind. Tata Elxsi will work on avionics, flight-control software, integration, verification and certification support. Sarla remains the design authority and the applicant for type certification. First flight is targeted in 18 to 24 months. Certification, the press note says, comes after that.
A first hover is a prototype event. A first ticketed passenger is an industrial and regulatory event. India has now moved far enough that the gap between those two moments can be described in documents rather than slogans.
Shunya is a large-cabin bet. The published design is lift-plus-cruise vertical lift on distributed electric rotors, then wing-borne cruise, with a stated range above 300 kilometres and a hybrid option that adds a sustainable-aviation-fuel tank for much longer hops. Seven propulsion units. Dual isolated battery packs. A 680-kilogram payload class. A half-scale demonstrator, Sylla 1.0, has already completed hover testing in the 700-kilogram class. Sylla 2.0 is meant to prove the transition from hover to wing-borne flight , the manoeuvre that separates a big drone from a powered-lift aeroplane. IndiGo Ventures has taken a stake. The engineering team includes people who previously worked at Lilium, Volocopter and Wisk. None of that is a type certificate.
The regulatory pathway exists on paper. In September 2024 the Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued Aircraft Engineering Advisory Circular AEAC 01 of 2024 guidance on type certification of VTOL-capable aircraft. It applies to piloted electric VTOL machines up to 5700 kilograms intended for advanced air mobility. Applicants need a Design Organisation Approval and, for series production, a Production Organisation Approval under CAR-21. The circular’s airworthiness annex uses the language that matters for passengers, continued safe flight and landing after a power-unit failure, without exceptional pilot skill. That is the essential performance bar EASA wrote into SC-VTOL. India has imported the idea. It has not yet issued a passenger type certificate against it.
In April 2025 DGCA added FCL 01 of 2025: training and endorsement for a VCA rating. A commercial or airline transport pilot licence, a Class I medical, and recent aeroplane or helicopter time are the entry conditions. Recency for carrying passengers is three take-offs, approaches and landings in 90 days on type or an approved simulator. There is still no large cadre of VCA instructors, no approved full-flight simulator for Shunya and no published syllabus that a flying school can sell. Licensing will lag the airframe unless the OEM builds the training system as carefully as the wing. Battery safety is the unglamorous gate. A thermal event over a Bengaluru flyover is not a prototype inconvenience. DGCA will want containment, isolation, firefighting agent compatible with lithium chemistry, and a maintenance programme that treats state-of-charge and cycle life as airworthiness items. Financing will follow that evidence, not the MoU. Tata Elxsi’s value is software and V&V discipline. It does not replace a production line, a parts pool, or an insurer willing to write hull and passenger liability on a new category.
India’s AAM challenge has moved from mock-ups to the certification stack. First flight in 2027 or 2028 would be a national engineering result. The first paying passenger requires a type certificate, a production approval, a licensed crew, a certified vertiport, an operator’s manual, and a city that will accept the noise. Shunya’s size makes that stack harder, not easier. A two-seat demonstrator can hide in a test box. A seven-seat air taxi has to live in the same sky as an A320 on short final.