Drones take off to transform economy with new policies and projects

The skies are abuzz with transformation. India, with its new Drone policy and opening the market further for the technology and startups, has made strides in this sector. With public-private partnerships to deliver medicines, vaccines and helping farmers with connectivity, usage of Drone has taken off with flying colours.

Throwing light on the role of Drones in the transformation of economy, Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air Mobility, talks about the Medicines from the Sky project, mid- and long- term changes expected in the sector that will work in the drone sector’s favour, and changes in the policy and its effect on the sector.

Edited excerpts:

How Skye Air is helping India adopt Smart Governance to streamline both its governance and business practices.

Skye Air is developing key technologies essential for ensuring automated and compliance-oriented delivery flights to happen in India. The development is on both fronts, internal governance for consolidating its wide spread operations and also systematic integration with FIMS (Flight Information Management System). After being conducted over a 1000 delivery flights delivering more than 3000 products ranging from healthcare to ecommerce to quick-commerce; we believe in a unified system to enable thousands of flights in a day.

What technologies will play a major role in efficient and transparent governance?

The Government is already building its Digital Sky platform which shall ensure efficient, secured and transparent governance of the Low and Very Low Altitude Airspace. There are multiple engines to this system, starting from Registration, Authentication, Monitoring and Analysis. All the drones flying or to be flying in the Indian airspace will need to mandatorily register and take flight authorization in the months to come.

The Government is focusing on multiple aspects to ensure safe and efficient utilisation of the Low Altitude Airspace and a lot of new initiatives are being taken to ensure industry gains full compliance

Medicine from the Sky project:

We have been conducting several POC/Trials with Private Healthcare, eCommerce and Logistics companies alongside with State Governments. We have worked with the Government of Telangana through their project “Medicine from the Sky” wherein we delivered vaccines, diagnostic samples and blood samples. We were the first company to begin the MFTS trials and did over 24 days of regular flights.

In early February, we did Agri-Commodity delivery in partnership with Invest India as a part of ODOP (One District One Product) in Lakadong, a remote village in Meghalaya, helping farmers with first mile connectivity.

Later in February, we also partnered with the Govt. of Himachal Pradesh to conduct four day long trials in the Chamba district connecting the area hospitals with primary/community healthcare centres.

Aside from the Government, we have been working on the forefront with clients like Flipkart, Dunzo, Blue Dart, Redcliffe Labs and others to conduct logistics operations via drones.

How has the change in policy affected you?

The Drone Rules 2021, has been the “OPPORTUNITY OPENER” for the entire Drone ecosystem. It has allowed drone operations to happen at a wide scale in the country giving a boost to more private sector involvement. The ease in norms and opening of the sector for delivery and other applications, has given the much-needed push to the overall industry. Under the aegis of Hon’ble Minister of Civil Aviation, the sector is poised to grow immensely and realize the vision of our Hon’ble Prime Minister, making India a Global Drone Hub by 2030.

With the kind of support that has been extended to this industry, right from the Ministers office, Secretary, Jt. Secretary, DGCA, AAI and all the authorities involved; we are certain that the Drone ecosystem will rise up to the opportunity in a big way. As a drone delivery company, which didn’t seem to take off before August 2021, here we are with 1000+ flights already done and with an aim to conduct 100,000 flights within the next 12-15 months.

What are the midterm and long term changes you see in the sector with respect to to the drones usage in governance?

As a mid-term, we see the Digital Sky system will be fully functional with all its features; further allowance of UTM service providers to integrate with the Digital Sky system to enable safer skies. In the long term, we see the concepts of Drone Corridors will also be incorporated to enable efficient management of the Low Altitude Airspace. In addition, we do see certain new possibilities to emerge in the market such as Remote Identification and Counter Drone technologies.

India has an ambitious goal of being a USD 5 Trillion economy in the coming years, we see Aviation including drones will contribute to a large level in order to achieve this goal. The Indian Drone Ecosystem will be creating millions of jobs and numerous new opportunities fueling the economic growth of the nation.