Tech Mahindra is to collaborate with ASKA, a drive and fly company aiming to offer consumers a new generation commuter vehicle by combining the convenience of an automobile, with VTOL and STOL flight.

This collaboration will leverage Tech Mahindra's expertise in the engineering space that comes with decades of experience of working with top aerospace and automotive customers. Tech Mahindra will support ASKA in the areas of design, analysis, development of composites and advanced materials, crash dynamics (automotive and aerospace), battery and structural testing.

Guy Kaplinsky, co-founder and ceo of ASKA, says, "We are confident that our engagement with Tech Mahindra will boost ASKA's development, testing and certification process to meet ASKA's commercialisation target for 2026. Tech Mahindra's aim to deliver tomorrow's experiences today, solidly supports our mission to solve the worldwide problem of traffic congestion and improve people's quality of life."

ASKA is a four-seater electric flying vehicle that can drive like a car and take off vertically to fly efficiently like an aircraft with a maximum flight range of 250 miles on a single charge. It is also equipped with a range extender engine that charges the batteries during flight. The collaboration will accelerate the eVTOL's development, testing and certification and thereby escalate its commercialisation by 2026, making it scalable to solve the problem of traffic congestion.

Lakshmanan Chidambaram, President – Enterprise Americas, Tech Mahindra, says, "The development of drive-and-fly vehicles is an emerging area of innovation globally, which can play a great role in creating best travel experience with minimal infrastructure investment and low environmental impacts. We look forward to creating synergies with ASKA by working on the engineering design and analysis of fly and drive eVTOL, and thereby delivering tomorrow's experience today, which forms the core objective of our NXT.NOW strategy."