India’s Drone Companies Are Beating In These 4 Sectors

However, the project could not progress beyond R&D and field trials as it hit regulatory hurdles. “Drone delivery can best be considered for emergency health care and disaster relief. Pizza delivery was not in question then,” said Vikram Singh Meena, founder and CEO of TechEagle. Two years later, TechEagle and Zomato merged a – Greet the other.

In healthcare too, drones could not make any big headway as US-based medical drone delivery firm Zipline found out in 2019. The company which had partnered with the Government of Maharashtra, Serum Institute of India and online medical supplies vendor Medikabazaar, made its India operations. “On hold” in January 2021. “Under the then existing regulations, it was taking longer than the company expected,” said Pawan Anant, who oversees its operations in India.

Well, that gloomy past now seems like a motivating proposition for the Indian commercial drone services industry as the regulatory air clears. There has been renewed activity in the space over the past few months, with players finding synergies in areas ranging from logistics to land surveying.

A few months back, the Telangana government in partnership with government think tank NITI Aayog, World Economic Forum and Apollo Hospitals organized a mega pilot ‘Medicine from the Sky’ in Vikarabad. Several drone companies including TechEagle partnered with companies like Flipkart, Dunzo and Blue Dart to operate over 350 flights covering a distance of 850 kms in 45 days. TechEagle delivers 200 doses of vaccines in a complete cold chain environment at 2.4 °C. It has now partnered with the Meghalaya government and Smart Village Movement to deliver medicines to difficult areas.

Despite Zomato’s initial experience with drones, arch rival Swiggy is trying its hand at drone delivery. Along with ANRA Technologies, it conducted 100-hour trials of food package delivery through drones in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in June this year.

The wind of change is being felt not only in the private sector but also in the public service. In April 2021, the Center launched a scheme called Swamitva to map land parcels in rural areas using drones to create accurate land records for planning and mitigating property disputes. Drone survey has been completed in more than 85,000 villages so far.

“The year 2021 was a turning point for the drone industry,” said TechEagle’s Meena.

sector without chain

A large part of this optimism is driven by new drone regulations, which were notified on 25 August 2021 after the government published it in March 2021.

Drone Federation of India (DFI) director Smit Shah said, “The industry had a quasi-legal position till the new rules came in.” That has changed now, and as Mrinal Pai, co-founder of Skylark Drones, pointed out, things are becoming as simple as the way plain-vanilla vehicle registration works. “The earlier policy was more or less non-functional: Digital Sky (now a one-stop platform for all drone-related compliances) was not working, published maps containing information on where you can or can’t fly and you needed permission flight-wise even within green zones. Maps are now in the public domain, and once your drones are registered, you can fly them freely in green zones, too Like how vehicle registration works,” Pai said.

“Now anyone can do test flights in green areas below 400 feet without any approvals,” said TechEagle’s Meena. Since the perimeter of the yellow zone (requires prior permission from the air traffic controller) has been reduced from 45 km to 12 km around airports. And the clear demarcation for red zones (permission given by the central government) has made “a large part of the country a green zone”.

In addition to the new drone regulations, there were other policy changes this year that will likely increase the uptake of drones across industries. On November 3, the Mineral Conservation and Development (Amendment) Rules, 2021 notified by the ministry to make drone survey images mandatory for leaseholds having an annual quarrying plan of 1 million tonnes or more or leased area of ​​50 hectares or more it was done. Similarly in June, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) mandated use of drones for monthly video recording of national highway projects during all phases of development, construction, operation and maintenance.

DFI expects the industry to grow rapidly, generating revenue of 50,000 crore in 2021-26 for drone manufacturers and service providers. from its current size 180-200 crore, said Shah of DFI, will account for 60-65% of the potential revenue potential of the service industry. The government anticipates that the service industry will develop 30,000 crore in the next three years, creating more than five lakh jobs.

in line of sight

Door-to-door drone delivery as a daily feature may still be a bit in the future, but the use of line of sight (VLOS) drone operations where the remote pilot maintains constant, unaided visual contact with the aircraft has arrived. is age. VLOS allows operational monitoring and mapping and surveying which has applications in mining, construction, energy, urban development and land records.

“We started looking at the drone space two years ago. Even though the regulatory framework was not the smoothest, the promise of drones as a technology across various industries was well understood, requiring very little capital expenditure and training to start operations,” said Skylark Investing in Drones Rajneesh Kapoor of Indian Angel Network said.

Skylark’s Pai pointed out that previously, only large customers managed to get an exemption from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to use drones for their operations. “Now customers are no longer worried about doing anything illegal, and are using drones for large-scale operations, not just limited sites,” Pai said.

Skylark has operations in India, the Middle East and Canada, and its clients include Tata Steel, UltraTech Cement, Saudi Electricity Company, Spring Energy and Reliance Infrastructure. Its revenue in fiscal 2010 saw a 23% year-on-year increase, . reached 2.6 crore, and the pie is expected to grow 3-4 times in FY22. The company raised $3 million from a pool of investors in its pre-Series A round in 2021, co-led by InfoEdge Ventures and IAN.

For VLOS operations, drones derive their value proposition from high-accuracy data collection. Skylark started out as a drone manufacturer in 2015 but soon transformed into a service provider with its own fleet. Since 2018, it has established itself as a drone software company that marries its drones with in-depth analysis and insights. Indian Angel Network.

Arav Unmanned Systems (AUS), an end-to-end drone service provider in the VLOS segment, has added 4-5 new clients since the rules were notified. It is currently working with several partners including Tata Steel, Hindalco, Adani and organizations like Coal India and Survey of India. “We see an increase in demand as larger customers have better clarity on where drones can be deployed under the new regulations,” said Vipul Singh, CEO of AUS.

Covid turned out to be a boon for Singh’s business as AUS became profitable with revenue doubling 6 crore in FY 2011. It is backed by a number of investors, including 3one4 Capital, 500 Startups and GroX. It has raised $2 million in three rounds since 2016 and is looking to raise more than its current investment size.

Crystal Ball was first conceived to provide drone solutions for the agriculture sector. However, fragmented land holdings and limited paying capacity of farmers made mass adoption difficult. Today, it is working with farmer producer organizations to help them strengthen their operations.

Along with agriculture giant Syngenta, Skylark drones began piloting operations in 2019, helping them achieve 95% data accuracy for crop monitoring over 1.5 years in three seasons. They are currently doing pilot work with Mahyco, a hybrid seed company, to explore business modalities – who owns or manages drones, leasing versus buying models, pricing points, and so on. Like.

drone delivery

While drone delivery pilots have gotten bigger – over distance, time as well as payload – and more often over the years, wider-scale commercial applications have yet to see the light of day.

The most immediate use of Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS) solutions, which are flights beyond visual range, appears to be in healthcare. Shah of DFI said that drone delivery in India will soon be commercialized in rural healthcare as it is far less risky and offers the most impactful use cases. Low wind and population density in rural areas reduce operational risk. Shah said that even in urban and semi-urban areas, the initial application of drone delivery would be where it would make a “life” rather than a “commercial” impact.

Today, several drone companies such as Sky Air, TechEagle and Redwing are eyeing the healthcare sector, where they plan to offer solutions to hitherto unresolved issues.

For example, the paradox that the health industry faces in remote areas is access versus wastage: if you don’t stock up on supplies, you lose lives, but if you do, you lose a lot. waste away. Faster and cheaper two-way connectivity between rural primary health centers and district supply centers and diagnostic centers may be the solution here. Minal Goel, who is working with the Telangana government on Medicine from the Sky, warns. “The drone delivery industry is yet to grow from a business perspective. Mass adoption will take at least a few years,” Goyal said, adding that the pricing has to be competitive with the government’s normal procurement system. Also, just delivering emergency supplies may not allow companies to reach commercial viability. They may have to cross-subsidise with regular healthcare delivery.

In the Telangana project, Sky Air piloted 11 km of straight lines, which were covered within 16-18 minutes. “If you cover 40 kilometers in 30 minutes with a rotary drone, you save 1.5 hours compared to road, but that may not be enough. Only when you start traveling long distances will you be able to achieve economy scale,” Goyal said.

Few companies have fast, long-range hybrid drones but integration with the larger healthcare system remains a challenge. For example, local health workers have to be trained to load and unload payloads safely. The payload used in Medicine from the Sky did not test for this further integration. The challenges for hyperlocal delivery are even greater. Most of the food and grocery delivery market is concentrated in populated urban areas. DFI’s Shah said, “Drones cannot even reach your doorstep as cities lack infrastructure like drone ports and corridors.” In addition, the economic viability of drone delivery for commercial goods as compared to Swiggy and Dunzo riders will have to be evaluated, he said.

“For drones to become a viable alternative, a change of sorts will be needed in the business model, in the same way that delivery companies introduced cloud kitchens. Drones would allow companies to set up large inventory stores, which now every 3 months.” They are installed over large distances to cover a wider radius at -5 kms and save both cost and time, he said.

The pie in the sky is becoming more and more real by the day.