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The Great Indian Wedding is increasingly incomplete without a drone or two hovering overhead to capture the special moments. These unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, now fly all over the place, lending a hand in everything from sports coverage and film shoots to disaster relief and border surveillance.
What started as a military experiment, with the Indian army importing drones from Israel in the 1990s and using them to monitor the Line of Control during the 1999 Kargil War against Pakistan, UAVs today command an estimated $43-million market, according to the latest report by consulting firm 1Lattice.
“Our first challenge was that no one believed it could be done,” recalls Vipul Singh, co-founder and CEO of AEREO (formerly Aarav Unmanned Systems), on his company’s attempts to launch commercial drone services in 2012.
Back then even drone components were not available off-the-shelf, so the bootstrapped start-up built its prototype from scratch, including essential components like the autopilot and propulsion system.
It ventured into remote sensing, deploying drones to survey and map the topography for industrial inspections and precision agriculture, among other uses. By 2016, AEREO received funding from 3one4 Capital and began selling its prototypes, too. From a pure hardware company it transformed into an end-to-end service provider two years later, offering clients the software to glean business insights from the data collected by its drones.
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Vipul Singh, co-founder and CEO of AEREO
With a focus on mining, urban and rural development, and large-scale infrastructure, AEREO has mapped 40,000 villages in the last 18 months and is currently executing a contract to map a one-lakh sq km area. The company says its revenues are growing 250 per cent annually, and it aims to spread to Latin America, West Asia, Australia, and other overseas markets within three years.
AEREO is one among the 200 drone start-ups in India today, which collectively bagged close to $50 million in funding last fiscal year, the highest in five years, according to 3one4 Capital, an early investor in the drone sector.
However, successes aside, the sector remains beset by a host of uncertainties and challenges, including regulatory ones.
The most significant of these was the blanket ban on the use of civilian drones in 2014, which stunted the growth of many drone start-ups.
It was a year later that Agnishwar Jayaprakash founded Garuda Aerospace. His initial challenge, he says, was to fight the popular perception that drones had no use beyond videography in marriages, sports events, and film shoots.
Jayaprakash believed drones could disrupt multibillion-dollar industries, especially in developing countries like India.
He saw the potential in drones fitted with probes, sensors, high-powered sprayers, lasers, and other types of cameras like multispectral and hyperspectral for a wide variety of uses.
‘Elephant whisperer’
“One of our initial projects was to fit drones with loudspeakers to help avert human-animal conflict for the forest departments in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In Karnataka, where elephants often enter villages and rampage them, we used the drones to guide the elephants back into the forest without needing to throw crackers [to scare them away] or use other physical force,” he reminisces.
The company’s more recent milestones include endorsement by Indian cricketer MS Dhoni, the launch of 100 Garuda drones in 100 locations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and securing a dual certification from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for a drone manufacturing unit and a remote pilot training organisation.
An agri-drone from Garuda Aerospace that assists in farming
It boasts over 350 clients, a 200-member team, and 300 dealers across India.
Much like Garuda, several other drone companies have expanded their operations into a variety of sectors such as defence, enterprises and consumer service.
Ankit Mehta, CEO of IdeaForge, believes that the drone ecosystem has become almost mainstream, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. It is emerging as a must-have technology, he says.
The drone manufacturing unit of Garuda Aerospace in Chennai
Launched in 2007, IdeaForge offers both hardware— UAVs, payloads, batteries, chargers and communication systems — and ground control software for drones and embedded autopilot sub-systems. A beneficiary of the civil aviation ministry’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, its drone services include surveillance, mapping and surveying.
It reported $17 million revenue (profit of $5.5 million) from operations during the six months up to September 2022, from $1.1 million during the same period the previous year. Vying for an initial public offering, the company filed a draft red herring prospectus in February 2023.
Soaring prospects
As more and more drone start-ups take wing in India, they collectively still constitute a mere 0.1 per cent of the estimated $21.1-billion global drone industry, according to 1Lattice.
In 2022, India banned import of drones and drone components (with some exceptions) as it targets to become a global drone hub by 2030.
The government aims to boost both supply and demand in the sector. After several policy changes down the years, the latest ‘Drone Rules 2021’ are expected to make it easier for organisations and individuals to own and operate drones, while the PLI scheme for manufacturers is meant to take care of supply.
“The Indian drone industry is thriving, with significant growth expected in the next few years. The perception of drones and their efficiency has evolved over the past decade. Research and development is a vital component in growing this ecosystem... as investments improve, the output will also improve,” says Anurag Ramdasan, Partner, 3one4 Capital.
1Lattice has forecast that with 80 per cent CAGR, the Indian drone sector would be valued at $812 million by FY27, fuelled by favourable policies, increased demand, cost-effective data collection, and new use cases.
The global drone industry, with CAGR of 20 per cent, is pegged to touch $51.4 billion by CY27 and $91.3 billion by CY30.
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