Olivier Le Lann, EVA, “We are optimistic and keen about the future”

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID19 times?

Thank you for asking! It hasn’t always been easy to coordinate children and work, but all in all, we’re doing well and are enjoying the quality time at home.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company

I started my career at Auchan Retail and then moved to Roche Diagnostics, hence my close connection to the healthcare sector and the understanding of the importance of effective logistics and inventory management.

I gained extensive experience in Toyko, where I also obtained a Master of Business Administration from Hitotsubashi University and later complemented my degree with an MBA from London Business School. In the years prior to founding EVA, I was Director of Business and Organizational Development at Tesla, where I accelerated the transition to sustainable energy and dynamically engaged our talent to implement Tesla’s strategy in Asia. Together with our VP Asia, I successfully introduced Tesla in Korea.

Throughout my time there, I realized how important the future of electric mobility is and what potential is still growing in this industry. I strongly believe that the transition has to happen sooner than later and that the time is right for fostering innovation in the Air Taxi and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle sector. So I took a leap of faith and founded EVA.

How does your company innovate?

Of course, innovation is one of our most important values and manifests our work here at EVA. We are aware that we are in an industry that is only just being built and which has the potential to majorly disrupt the world and how the future of mobility will look like.

Ever since the beginning of EVA’s journey, we’ve listened carefully to the market trends and the mentoring support we’ve received from Starburst, Techstars, MBRIF and Urban-X. This has made us adapt our product strategy over time, innovate our approaches, and disrupt our assumptions. We are proud to say that we are now truly fond of our current market position and that we believe that our willingness to constantly innovate and never stand still, has brought us to where we are today.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business and how are you coping?

In fact, we have been lucky in the sense that Drones are gaining in public acceptance during these unfortunate times. People are starting to see the UAV industry as something that has great potential to serve the public for good and support society in overcoming the spreading of the virus. As remotely piloted devices, drones are naturally effective at minimizing human interactions, which is crucial when e.g. the same people who are meant to safeguard the communities can potentially become vectors for the virus to spread. Through the implementation of drone missions, testing kits and blood samples can be delivered from households to hospitals or labs without any human interaction, which makes it essentially a much safer.

Did you have to make difficult choices and what are the lessons learned?

We’ve surely had to battle some difficulties over the past month, but all in all, we’ve managed to maneuver through it and keep our entire team on a full-time basis.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety, how do you project yourself and your company in the future?

Spend time with my kids / my family, go to the beach for a few hours, and enjoy the beautiful lifestyle which Portugal has to offer.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

For sure there are other players in the market focusing on drone landing solutions or ways to further automate the charging process. However, at this point, our competitors are mainly focusing on mono-drone boxes which can only host and charge one drone at the time. We believe that the future of the UAV sector will mainly resemble around drone-fleets, as this is where drones can add great value to society (healthcare logistics, disaster response, surveillance & inspection, etc.). We aspire to be the future-gas station of the newly evolving UAV industry and thus believe in a high-throughput and large coverage.

Your final thoughts?

Everyone at EVA is excited to be part of this journey and to help this world to gradually transition to a world with clean energy and access to healthcare and critical goods. We are optimistic and keen about the future and are looking forward to connecting the world through the UAV industry, one Vertical Station at the time.

Your website?

https://eva.xyz/