This Uttarakhand youth built a flying car. Watch it take off in Almora

A 40-kilometre drive that normally eats up an hour and a half from his village to his home could soon take just 10 minutes, in the air. Ravi Tamta, an innovator from Kaflikhan village in Almora, Uttarakhand, has successfully test-flown a single-seater flying car of his own making on an open ground in Almora. He built the machine, a modified and upgraded version of drone technology, under his own startup, Hapida Sky, and has named it the HAPIDA SKYNEX Prototype. Videos of the flight are now spreading across social media.

A Home-Grown Sky Machine

As per local reports, Tamta described it as a product of "desi jugaad", built by improving on existing drone technology until it could carry a person. He and his team ran the test flight themselves on a ground in Almora, and Tamta has called it a step toward India's first Personal Flying Vehicle.

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Speaking after the test flight, Tamta could not hide his emotions. In his own words: "Today is a very big day in my life. I am extremely happy and proud to share that the first successful flight of HAPIDA SKYNEX is the result of years of research, struggle, experiments and continuous efforts," told local reporters.


For Tamta, this was not a one-off experiment. He says it is the outcome of a dream he has chased for years, and he is calling it the start of a new chapter for what he terms "Personal Sky Mobility" in India.

From A 90-Minute Drive To A 10-Minute Flight

Tamta's pitch for why India needs machines like this is a very personal one. He points out that in Almora, covering just 40 kilometres to reach his own home takes him around an hour and a half by road. A flying car, he says, could cover the same distance in 10 to 15 minutes.

His larger vision goes beyond his own commute. He believes future transport will not stay limited to roads, people will start using the sky for personal travel too. His stated goal is to build safe, electric, and innovation-driven personal sky mobility, rather than a one-time novelty machine.

Not His First Unusual Invention

This is not the first time Ravi Tamta's name has come up for building something out of the ordinary. Back in 2019, he claimed to have developed an electrolyte pump machine that could charge electric vehicles in a fraction of the usual time, and even demonstrated it in Haldwani. He argued at the time that the technology could work out faster and cheaper than conventional charging methods.

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Over the years, he has also experimented with shoes that charge mobile phones, early prototypes of helicopter models, and a GPS-enabled stick designed to help forest workers.

Whether HAPIDA SKYNEX eventually becomes a real product people can buy is still an open question. But for a village innovator in the hills of Uttarakhand, turning a drone into something a person can actually fly in is already a milestone worth talking about.