On December 2021, California-based Archer Aviation announced that its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air-taxi's prototype had its first successful hover test. At the same time, a housewife in Chennai still had doubts regarding the flying taxi start-up founded in 2017 by her husband Professor Satya Chakravarthy and his student, taking a leave from his IIT Madras teaching job.

       A few days later, she got the keys to a truck that aerospace engineer Chakravarthy and his partner Pranjal Mehta bought for loading a plane and doing an internal test on speed. It then dawned on ...