Students who took India a step closer to air mobility.
Built by Team Skyworks — Manikanta, Ajit Kumar, Sai Sankar, Ch Manikanta, K Manoj Kumar, J Sai Deekshith, Ashwith, B Ramprasad Reddy, Agastya Pandey & Sanjay
A ten-student team moved beyond theory to build and demonstrate an electric vertical take-off and landing prototype in India.
Air mobility is usually discussed through glossy renders and distant promises. At SRM University-AP, ten B.Tech students chose the harder route: they designed, fabricated and flight-tested an actual prototype.
Their project is called DOXI, an indigenous advanced-air-mobility platform developed by Team Skyworks with mentor Dr Pradyut Kumar Sanki at the university's Centre for Drone Technology.
DOXI uses a 16-motor electric vertical take-off and landing configuration on a carbon-fibre frame. SRM University-AP reports a payload capacity of up to 80 kg, a top speed of 50 km/h and flight endurance of 25 minutes.
During its July 2026 launch on campus, the prototype demonstrated stable vertical take-off and landing. The modular platform brings together aerospace engineering, embedded systems, automated flight control, communication technologies and software.
Team Skyworks comprises Manikanta, Ajit Kumar, Sai Sankar, Ch Manikanta, K Manoj Kumar, J Sai Deekshith, Ashwith, B Ramprasad Reddy, Agastya Pandey and Sanjay.
A prototype is not yet a commercial air taxi. Certification, redundancy, safety validation and scale remain enormous challenges. But these students have already crossed the line that matters most for young builders: they turned an ambitious idea into something that left the ground.