India’s Strategic Initiatives for eVTOL and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)

By Abhinash Jena on September 18, 2025

India’s urban mobility landscape is shaped by congested ground networks, legacy infrastructure, and rapidly growing travel demand. India’s economy has grown significantly since the early 1990s, leading to a higher demand for transportation. Urban mobility in India is deteriorating due to rapid motorisation, underdeveloped public transit, inadequate infrastructure and environmental concerns. The lack of an appropriate public transport system has resulted in general decline in public transport trips in cities of all sizes. There is a constant decline in the share of public transport due to a failure in providing quality public transport (Dr. E. Sreedharan, 2011; Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, n.d., 2023). These structural weaknesses have opened the way for innovative transport solutions. Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircrafts are increasingly recognised as a practical means of addressing gaps in accessibility, reliability, and last-mile connectivity.

For eVTOL and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) demand to materialize and grow, India needs an integrated, multimodal mobility strategy that includes modernizing public transport, investing in non-motorized transit infrastructure, and adoption of smart mobility technologies. Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), centred on eVTOL aircrafts, has undergone a significant evolution, transforming from early conceptual designs to a rapidly developing industry driven by technological advancements and urban challenges. India’s mobility landscape is increasingly constrained by legacy transport infrastructure yet demand for movement continues to expand. AAM, supported by airspace management frameworks such as Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), is emerging as a possible solution.

India launched the Digital Sky platform in 2018 as a single-window clearance system for drone operations, introducing the “No Permission, No Take-off” (NPNT) protocol and a national airspace map with green, yellow, and red zones (Ministry of Civil Aviation, 2022). Furthermore, in 2020 – 2022, the Ministry of Civil Aviation authorised BVLOS experimental projects under the BEAM Committee. The data from these experiments cover detect-and-avoid, lost-link scenarios, and command-and-control reliability (Ministry of Civil Aviation, 2021a). Furthermore, in 2024, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued two advisory circulars:

  • type certification for eVTOL-capable aircraft (with pilot onboard) and,
  • design and operational guidance for vertiports.

While autonomy is not yet in scope, the framework anchors the regulatory path for piloted eVTOL demonstrations (DGCA, 2024a, 2024b). India’s readiness is policy-strong but implementation-nascent. It has established a centralised digital platform, legalised a UTM architecture, and published certification guidance. However, it lacks published operational corridor procedures, ATM–UTM integration rules, and dynamic allocation mechanisms. Furthermore, the trajectory of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) in India is also closely tied to the maturity of its enabling infrastructure and technological ecosystem.

Infrastructural Constraints Affecting AAM Implementation in India

While the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has made regulatory strides through Digital Sky and type certification guidance for piloted VTOL aircraft, systemic constraints rooted in India’s broader transport–energy landscape continue to hold back operational readiness. Infrastructure availability is a major obstacle in the broader electric vehicle ecosystem in India, which extends to AAM eVTOLs’. India’s structurally weak and financially strained electricity grid, exacerbated by inefficiencies like cross-subsidy policies, poses a fundamental challenge to providing the reliable power supply essential for eVTOL functionality (Singh, 2014).

India’s AAM race isn’t held back by aerospace policy alone; it’s tethered to very concrete, electrical realities already visible in the EV transition. eVTOL charging requires higher power levels than EVs, the challenge scales further, demanding active filtering and power-quality controls at vertiports. Unmanaged fast charging can shift and amplify peaks, stress distribution transformers, and degrade power quality (voltage profile, harmonics), thereby reducing local reliability. Furthermore, in metropolitan India, it is difficult to find space for installing additional transformers, forcing reliance on demand-side management and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) optimisation. Vertiports that will facilitate transfer between ground and air transportation, are expected to cluster in central business districts and airport-adjacent zones. Therefore simply cannot assume straightforward grid reinforcements for stable power supply. For eVTOLs, this implies vertiports in city centres cannot depend solely on utility upgrades; they will need embedded storage and careful load staggering (Gopinathan & Shanmugam, 2022). Unless India integrates smart charging mandates, urban power siting policies, fiscal support mechanisms, and city-level governance models, its AAM trajectory will lag countries where utility-aviation coordination is more advanced.

Furthermore, India also lacks a comprehensive framework for vertiport siting and design that incorporates pads, passenger facilities, maintenance hubs, and multimodal integration. Vertiports are anticipated to play a significant role in the development of the air taxi industry. It aims to provide on-demand aerial transportation for passengers and cargo within urban and suburban regions (Hodell et al., 2022). In dense Indian metros, land acquisition, zoning, and public acceptance compound the difficulty of implementing such sites. International regulators such as the FAA and EASA have already outlined baseline criteria for vertiport components, including touchdown and lift-off (TLOF) pads, gates, and safety clearances, tailored to specific eVTOL dimensions and performance characteristics (Ahn & Hwang, 2022). This method is useful when eVTOLs differ widely in physical dimensions, performance, and ground handling needs.

However, designing vertiports solely around individual aircraft types of risks locking the infrastructure into narrow specifications. Given the diversity of current eVTOL designs, ranging from multirotor to lift-plus-cruise configurations, rigid infrastructure planning could fragment the network and lead to expensive retrofits when new or different vehicle models emerge. While addressing major hazards, the DGCA vertiport circular (DGCA, 2024a) tends to set minimum standards borrowing directly from helicopter precedent and international ICAO guidelines. Advanced aspects such as dynamic separation for mixed fleets, high-throughput operations, and real-time unmanned traffic management (UTM) integration are acknowledged but left for future revision.

Technological Gaps in Communication and eVTOL Traffic Management

Safe and scalable eVTOL operations rely on continuous and resilient communication links. These include air-to-ground (AG) channels for command and control, and air-to-air (AA) exchanges for collision avoidance and situational awareness. Sinha et al. (2024), stresses that the communication networks for advanced air mobility must be highly reliable, secure, and capable of handling large data volumes in real time. During close encounters such as at air corridor intersections, eVTOL vehicles should directly share their flight intentions with one another in real time. Such air-to-air links will allow vehicles to perform detect-and-avoid (DAA) manoeuvres, complementing any centralized traffic management on the ground. Building on this, the government released the National Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management (UTM) Policy Framework in 2021 (Pwc, 2022). It lays the foundation for a digitally integrated low altitude air traffic management ecosystem. A key requirement in the UTM framework is Real-Time Identification and Tracking (RIT), which involves broadcasting ID, location, timestamp, heading, speed, and emergency status (Ministry of Civil Aviation, 2020). However, India is yet to designate a specific air-to-air comm system for AAM, representing a gap in the architecture. India’s regulations recognise the importance of digital connectivity and information exchange for AAM traffic, but specific technical standards for communications are still being developed.

Furthermore, cellular connections (4G & 5G) are being prioritized over unlicensed radio frequency (RF) for commercial drones requiring long-range, reliable BVLOS operations (Arribas et al., 2023; Batistatos et al., 2018; Kasurinen, n.d.). India’s telecom sector is rapidly deploying 5G networks, and industry trials indicate strong interest in using 5G for drone connectivity (Khan, 2021). However, challenges such as ensuring high data connectivity at low altitudes and in BVLOS scenarios across different times of day are still being assessed through dedicated radio probes and testbeds (Marques et al., 2019). It is also noted that global trials of cellular-connected drones faced technical issues such as interference and cell overshoot from line-of-sight to multiple base stations, as well as frequent handovers caused by aircraft altitude and speed (TEC, 2020). At present, there is no dedicated licensed spectrum in India reserved exclusively for UAS communications. The reliance on unlicensed spectrum in densely populated areas will further degrade operational reliability. Although India’s UTM policy hints at future spectrum solutions by calling for “standardised communication protocols” between UTM system components (Ministry of Civil Aviation, 2021b) but concrete steps have yet to be formalized.

Strategic Responses and Mitigation Efforts

The progress of eVTOL and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) in India faces significant hurdles due to the interplay of power and charging infrastructure constraints with communication and network challenges. The resilience of the power grid is crucial, as disruptions caused by extreme weather events or equipment failures can interrupt the continuous power supply vital for eVTOL services (Garg et al., 2023). The Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) is a significant government initiative in India designed to improve the efficiency, reliability, and financial stability of the nation’s power distribution sector (Ahmad et al., 2024). Launched in 2022, the scheme aims to transform the power distribution infrastructure through various upgrades and the integration of smart technologies (Shaikh & Kulkarni, 2025). RDSS is pertinent to AAM in India, which depends on electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that have significant power needs. It also enables better integration of renewable energy sources enhancing grid resilience.

In dense Indian metros where new transformer siting is difficult, India’s strategic initiatives for grid stability is to leverage Demand Side Management (DSM), Distributed Energy Storage (DES), and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technologies to enhance energy efficiency, integrate renewable energy, and promote sustainable electric mobility (Gopinathan & Shanmugam, 2022; Pillai et al., 2017). Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is an emerging approach that leverages EV batteries to provide grid support services, such as frequency regulation, peak shaving, and renewable energy integration (Xu, 2025). V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) implementation in India is in its early stages, with ongoing pilot projects and committee work by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) to establish regulations for bidirectional power flow from EVs to the grid. The integration of V2G with renewable energy sources offers a robust framework for addressing energy variability and grid stability, thereby supporting sustainable electric mobility (Shukla et al., 2025). India has set an ambitious goal of becoming Net Zero in carbon emissions by 2070, and V2G technology is a significant step towards this goal by fostering a symbiosis of the power and electric vehicle sectors (Chavan et al., 2024). In overall, DSM, DES, and V2G represent a comprehensive strategy for grid-side mitigation, focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energy integration, and supporting electric mobility while ensuring grid stability and sustainability.

In the communication and network space, India is exploring hybrid solutions involving cellular and satellite networks to ensure redundancy and reliability for flight-critical links. These hybrid networks combine terrestrial cellular infrastructure with satellite communication links to provide robust, reliable connectivity, which is crucial for flight-critical applications such as Air Traffic Control (ATC) and beyond visual line-of-sight operations (Zhou & Tan, 2024). India’s ambition in space and air mobility is underpinned by a sophisticated and evolving regulatory framework designed to foster innovation while ensuring safety and compliance. The Space National Grid Policy (S-NGP) (ISRO/DoS) establishes the foundational operative rules for the nation’s space activities (ISRO, n.d.). Whereas the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) National Guidelines and Policy (NGP) (2024) acts as the primary mechanism for updating and operationalizing these authorizations (IN-SPACe, 2024).

A key aspect of IN-SPACe’s operational mandate is its interface and coordination with other Indian regulatory bodies, such as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) (Rongeet Poddar, 2022). This dual-layered approach aims to create a robust ecosystem that promotes both governmental and private sector participation in India’s rapidly expanding aerospace sector. The Space National Grid Policy (S-NGP) serves as a comprehensive framework outlining the objectives, scope, and legal authority for space operations in India. It’s overarching goal is to align India’s space program with national growth and societal well-being, leveraging space capabilities for a wide array of applications, including civil development and national security. This foundational policy provides the underlying principles and strategic direction for India’s engagement in space, paving the way for the operationalization of authorizations that are critical for innovative sectors such as AAM. Globally, leaders are moving to hybrid terrestrial–satellite architectures for UAS/AAM reliability (Chen et al., 2025; Courville et al., 2007). India’s S-NGP and IN-SPACe NGP provide exactly the regulatory primitives that EU and U.S. programs (Pongsakornsathien et al., 2025) rely on to assure coverage, continuity, and resilience.

India’s strategic initiatives in hybrid network solutions and grid-side mitigations are playing a crucial role in advancing its position in the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) race. Together, these initiatives create a synergistic foundation for India’s AAM ecosystem by ensuring both reliable communication networks and resilient energy infrastructure. This integrated approach not only supports the safe and scalable deployment of AAM technologies but also aligns with sustainable urban and regional transportation goals, positioning India competitively in the global eVTOL and AAM race.

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I am an interdisciplinary educator, researcher, and technologist with over a decade of experience in applied coding, educational design, and research mentorship in fields spanning management, marketing, behavioral science, machine learning, and natural language processing. I specialize in simplifying complex topics such as sentiment analysis, adaptive assessments and data visualizatiion. My training approach emphasizes real-world application, clear interpretation of results and the integration of data mining, processing, and modeling techniques to drive informed strategies across academic and industry domains.

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