At my recent visit in Riga I spoke with Ivan Tolchinskiy, CEO and founder of Atlas Dynamics. Ivan has a strong vision about innovating and improving Drone Technology by translating the knowledge of military technology into private life and organisations. The Atlas drones are multi-system instruments, faster, easier to handle and simple, also beautiful in design (they won the red-dot-award 2018 for the Pro professional drone ).
The company is only 2,5 years old and was founded in Riga because the city is a large hub for aerospace development in Europe which makes it an amazing place for designing and building cutting-edge aerial vehicles. With great universities and human capital, and the benefits of being an EU company, Latvia is the perfect place for this start-up.
Despite being at already 42 employees and new projects coming up around the world, Ivan does not yet see the development of Atlas Dynamics as a “success story”. His visions and scale of thinking are too big and encompassing to satisfy at this stage. As all elements of their products are proprietary (built by themselves) their further development is independent on third-party supplies and therefore has no limits in numbers and solutions.
Ivan himself is an aerospace engineer with a previous career in the defense industry in Israel. His vision was to bring advanced aerospace technology to non-military application. The system he wanted to build should be responsible, easy to handle, with a great quality and affordable price. His vision for the company is to innovate and to disrupt the drone market by creating uncomparable products.
He literally built the first prototype of one of his drones in his kitchen at home, made a video about the product and was promptly contacted by his first investor who saw the video on Youtube and agreed to provide a grant to start the company. That was only 2,5 years ago and, ever since, opportunities have found him and allowed the company to grow and explore new areas.
The visit was enabled by LIAA – the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia
