What happened
Sarla Aviation, a Bengaluru-based startup building electric air taxis, has adopted Siemens Xcelerator—a suite of design, simulation, and lifecycle management software—to speed up development of its next-generation eVTOL aircraft. The company plans to launch operations in Bengaluru by 2028.
Why it matters
By connecting product design, simulation, and data management in one system, Sarla can reduce design iterations early, improve team collaboration, and strengthen the verification and validation processes needed for aircraft certification. The move reflects how startups in emerging mobility are using digital tools to compress development timelines.
What to watch
Sarla will present its progress at Realize LIVE India, where co-founder and CTO Rakesh Gaonkar will discuss how the digital approach is accelerating innovation in urban air mobility.
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Sarla Aviation's adoption of Siemens Xcelerator reflects a broader shift in how advanced mobility startups approach aircraft development. Rather than building certification-grade aircraft through traditional, physical-iteration-heavy methods, the company is using an integrated digital environment to compress the design-to-validation cycle. This approach—what Siemens and others call a "digital thread"—connects every stage of development (concept, detailed design, simulation, data management) in a single system, allowing engineers to catch design flaws and optimize performance before building hardware.
For an eVTOL startup, this is particularly critical. Electric vertical take-off aircraft are more complex than conventional aircraft in several ways: their electrical architecture must safely manage battery power, distribute it across multiple motors, and integrate avionics—all while meeting strict safety certification standards. Sarla's choice to adopt Siemens software for electrical design (Capital), simulation (Simcenter), and compliance tracking (Polarion) suggests the company is building with certification requirements in mind from the start, not as an afterthought. The mention of DO-178C compliance—a standard for airborne software—underscores that Sarla is treating this as a certified aircraft program, not a prototype venture.
The 2028 Bengaluru launch target places Sarla's timeline alongside other global eVTOL programs. By publicly committing to that date and investing in industrial-grade software infrastructure now, the company is signaling that it views digital tools as a competitive advantage in a field where time-to-market, safety validation, and regulatory approval are all bottlenecks.
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