Exclusive: Leadership Exodus At Throttle Aerospace Systems; All Executives Step Down

Nagendran Kandasamy, the founder of Throttle Aerospace Systems (TAS), a Bengaluru-based drone hardware and software maker, has stepped down from his role as CEO. Not only this, the entire leadership team, including COO Nischitha, CFO Girish Reddy, and CTO Shashi Kumar R, has also resigned from their respective positions.

Meanwhile, they continue to remain the shareholders of the company.

TAS is India’s first provisionally DGCA-approved drone maker for civil drones and has a license to manufacture military drones from the Ministry of Defence under the country’s new drone policy.

The company has designed and developed indigenous drones for multiple verticals which include agriculture, inspection, mapping, mining, monitoring, cargo payload, last-mile delivery and surveillance.

Kandasamy, along with Nischitha, Reddy and Kumar, holds 40% of the company’s equity.

It is worth noting that in May 2022, RattanIndia Enterprises, a diversified firm, acquired a 60% stake in Throttle Aerospace Systems for an undisclosed amount. This investment was made through NeoSky India Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RattanIndia.

Through its subsidiary, NeoSky, RattanIndia aims to provide comprehensive 360-degree drone solutions to customers, including drones as a product (DaaP), drones as a service (DaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).

What Exactly Happened

“It turned out to be a wrong marriage,” said one of the team members who resigned.

“While manufacturing drones was our forte, we were struggling financially. And, this is where RattanIndia came into the picture,” he added.

Having acquired the majority of shares, the management started interfering in every decision and creating various constraints using the majority. The executive team was not even allowed to take decisions for day-to-day functioning, the financial support to TAS was almost stopped, Inc42 learnt from sources.

The resignation spree followed the management’s decision to sack TAS CFO Reddy. The entire leadership team extended their full support to Reddy and resigned.

The management team wanted to depute its person and that’s how it all started.

With the resignation of its key members, it is believed that Sharath Chandra Gudlavalleti, who heads NeoSky, will also lead TAS.

Inc42 has reached out to RattanIndia Enterprises for comments on the latest developments. The story will be updated upon receiving a response from the company.