Agnishwar Jayaprakash is Dataquest Pathbreaker of the Year 2024

The Jury recognized Agnishwar Jayaprakash for his role in Garuda Aerospace’s services in pioneering innovations in AI-drone technology, with solutions like the Namo Drone Didi and Garuda Kisan Drone, while dominating the market share in the agricultural segment.

At the recent Aero India 2025 in Bengaluru, Garuda signed an MoU with Tata Elxsi to establish a Centre of Excellence for Indigenised UAV Design and Development. They will develop “indigenous UAV systems, including drones, sensors, AI-driven analytics, eVTOL Solutions, catering to defence, agriculture, and smart city applications”.

Garuda Aerospace has 2,500 drones with 4,000 pilots and more than half the market share in India’s agricultural drone segment. Using AI-drone technology, the company looks at “precision agriculture with enhanced reconnaissance and surveillance”. They use IoT and cloud computing to enhance drone data analytics. 

DQ ICT Awards 2024

The Dataquest IT Person of the Year is Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways; lnformation and Broadcasting; and Electronics and Information Technology. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Prof. S. Sadagopan, Founder Director of IIIT-Bangalore, and Dr. Sridhar Mitta, Founder & MD, NextWealth Entrepreneurs.

Started in 1993 as India’s first annual IT awards show, the 32nd edition ceremony will take place on March 7 in New Delhi with an all-day conference on: India and the AI Revolution. The Who’s Who of the ICT industry is expected to attend the awards ceremony.

The Jury Chair was Raman Roy, CMD, Quatrro BPO Solutions. Dr. B.V.R. Mohan Reddy, Founder Chairman Cyient was Jury Co-chair. The jury consisted of: Amit Patra, Director, IIT BHU; Arvind Gupta, Co-Founder & Head, Digital India Foundation; CP Gurnani, ex-CEO, Tech Mahindra; Devesh Tyagi, CEO, NIXI; Hemant Tiwari, Head of commercial Sales, APAC, Hitachi Vantara; Hilal Khan, CIO, Honda Cars India; Sanjiv Krishen, Chairman, Iris Global and Vijay Thadani, Co-Founder, NIIT Group. Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia Group also was Jury Co-chair.