Sampriti Bhattacharyya broke away from traditional gender restrictions in her home country of India to become the founder and CEO of a pioneering electric boat builder in the US. Yet ironically, when we connect via Zoom, she is back in the confines of her teenage bedroom in Calcutta for the first time in seven years. She points to the relics of her past that led her to pursue training as an aerospace engineer in the United States: a copy of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” (which further deepened her interest in the universe), the huge Compaq computer where she worked for the first time, googled “American internship” and… a poster of a boy band from the 90s. “The only thing I knew about America was NASA and the Backstreet Boys,” she says with a laugh.
The 36-year-old Bhattacharyya has defied all odds right from the start. She attended a small local college in Calcutta that was not part of India’s prestigious academic pipeline and says people never thought she was particularly bright. “The best that was expected of me,” she recalls, “was perhaps to be a housewife or have a menial job.” But Bhattacharyya was always fascinated by space and curious about ocean exploration, taking up space as a “hobby “ took part in astrophysics and cosmology courses. She was also involved in robotics projects.
Such determination can be a little isolating, she admits, but it also has “its perks”: That’s why she applied for no fewer than 540 internships at this Compaq. “If I had sent 200 emails, I might not have made it to the US,” she muses. After receiving a total of four responses, she finally landed a coveted summer internship at Fermilab, America’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory. At the age of 20, Bhattacharyya boarded a plane for the first time and arrived in Chicago with $200 in his pocket.
She soon fell in love with machines and coding—particularly the ways technology could help solve what she calls the world’s difficult problems. This idea would become their way of working and the core of their later foundations. After her performance at Fermi and while pursuing her master’s degree in science at Ohio State University, Bhattacharyya landed an internship at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where she worked on autonomous aircraft. At NASA she also learned for the first time about the young entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. “I saw Mark Zuckerberg and was blown away by the fact that someone young could be a CEO,” she says. “That gave me the idea of starting a business.”
The Hydroswarm team at MIT in 2016. Bhattacharyya (second from left) holds a model of the company’s submersible robot. Aaron Wojack
First, she armed herself with more education and began the PhD program in mechanical engineering at MIT. In 2015, at the age of 28 and two years before completing her PhD in robotics, she founded Hydroswarm. The company, which made underwater drones to map the seafloor, eventually failed, but Bhattacharyya’s goal of creating a fleet of autonomous ships remained. Her ability to persevere despite what she describes as “many failures” is partly inspired by the billionaire founder of Amazon. “Jeff Bezos says, ‘Be persistent on the vision but flexible on the details,'” she says. “That’s what I did when Hydroswarm wasn’t working.”
Bhattacharyya pivoted, building an operating system to modernize existing boats and, she hoped, transform water transportation through self-steering fleets. The pandemic threw a wrench into that plan as it proved impossible to gain access to the ships, let alone convert them. However, the entrepreneur in her believed that the electric revolution could extend from land to sea. Computers became cheaper, sensors became more advanced, and scalable manufacturing was now a real possibility. Instead of thinking smaller, she went bigger: “It became clear that the answer wasn’t to retrofit,” she says. “It was about imagining the next generation of ships from the ground up.”
In 2020, Bhattacharyya enlisted his MIT-trained engineer Reo Baird to help launch Navier, hoping to create a cleaner, more efficient way to travel on the waves and thus reduce congestion on the roads. The duo built a core team of seven industry experts by selling them the dream. Bhattacharyya recruited hydrofoil specialist Paul Bieker as lead naval architect. “I called him and said, ‘I know you’ve built $40 million yachts for the America’s Cup, but if we scale this technology, it’s going to change the way people move on the waterways ‘”, she says. When engineer Kenneth Jensen, who previously worked at Google and Uber, initially rebuffed their advances, Bhattacharyya told him, “This thing has to exist.” He is now Navier’s chief technology officer. Their persistence also led to the startup receiving $10 million in seed funding from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Android co-founder Rich Miner and other venture capitalists.
From its headquarters in San Francisco, Navier designed a 30-foot, eight-passenger electric foiling yacht (the N30), which progressed from sketch to finished, full-size boat in 11 months. Three months later a second ship was completed. “What amazed me was that they worked on the first sea trial,” says Bhattacharyya.
“The best that was expected of me,” she remembers, “was perhaps to be a housewife or to have a menial job.”
The N30 glides four feet above the water on three carbon foils that increase speed and efficiency while minimizing wake and drag. The foil concept has been around since the early 19th century, but Navier’s proprietary operating system is what sets the N30 apart. The ship’s sensors relay information about wave conditions to software, which then adjusts the foils to ensure a smooth ride. (We tested it and it was absolutely peaceful.) The technical features even include auto-docking or “one-click docking”. The boat is also equipped with two 90kW electric motors, allowing it to reach 35 knots at full tilt and travel 75 nautical miles at 22 knots. Thanks to the foils and reduced drag, Navier says the zero-emission cruiser is 10 times more efficient than traditional gas-powered boats. “It is certainly the most advanced electric marine vessel,” says Bhattacharyya.
The N30 will be available in three configurations: Open ($375,000), Hardtop ($450,000) and Cabin ($550,000). The company expects to deliver between 30 and 50 vessels by the end of next year, with electromechanical research and development and assembly taking place in Alameda, California. These personal ships will be a great way to “refine” the technology, says Bhattacharyya, and are just a small part of Navier’s master plan. It hopes to eventually introduce electric water taxis and barges to transport people and goods in coastal cities around the world.
“I think if we can do this,” she says, a steely determination evident in her sunny optimism, “that would really be proof of my success.”