Ever since the centre liberalised the policy governing drones operation in India via the Drones Rules 2021, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ecosystem heaved a sigh of relief. 

A slew of positive announcements related to the segment. For example, the Cabinet’s approval of INR 120 Cr PLI scheme, a ban on the import of drones – intended to boost domestic manufacturing, and the drone certification scheme to ensure safety and quality requirements are a few positive steps. Besides, the establishment of digital airspace mapping for drones alongside announcements such as Drone Shakti and Kisan drones have been touted as a step in the right direction by experts.

All of these point in one direction – the developments will enable more jobs and help support an industry that has long been struggling due to bureaucratic hurdles. Finally, the segment can focus on building an investment-friendly ecosystem, as well as work with the government on programmes that incentivise local manufacturing.

In fact, India has witnessed a 34.4% surge in the number of drone or UAV startups between August 2021 (157 startups) and February 2022 (221 drone startups). 

Earlier, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that India has the potential to become a global drone hub by 2030 since a large number of industries will adopt drone innovation. Prior to this, he also estimated that the Indian drone industry would have a turnover of around INR 15,000 Cr by 2026.

In this article, Inc42 has compiled a list of 28 Indian drone startups, detailing their journeys – from what they do to their plans amid the booming deeptech segment.

The list below is not meant to be a ranking of any kind. We have listed the Indian drone startups in alphabetical order.

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Aereo

• Founded In: 2013
• Founders: Vipul Singh, Suhas Banshiwala
• Funding Raised To Date: $748K
• Investors: GrowX, 500 Startups, StartupXseed, 3one4 capital, Valpro
• Headquarters: Bengaluru 

Launched in 2013, Aereo (earlier Aarav Unmanned Systems) offers end-to-end drone solutions. AUS is building commercial-grade drones and provides drone-based solutions for enterprise applications in Mining, Infrastructure, Urban Planning, Irrigation, Energy and Agriculture. 

It also offers integrated solutions for drone applications, providing the drone, an operator and a cloud platform for data analysis. It was also amongst the three companies that were shortlisted to map India’s 600,000 villages by the government.

In July 2022, it signed an MoU with Tata Steel to develop and offer integrated drone solutions for open cast mining operations.

Prior to that, it got into a lease financial deal worth INR 3.75 Cr with Grip to build new revenue streams by leveraging lease financing for more than 50 drones.

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Aero360

• Founded In: 2017
• Founders: Pragadish Santhosh
• Funding Raised To Date: NA
• Investors: NA
• Headquarters: Chennai

Founded in 2017, Chennai-based Aero360 builds autonomous hybrid drones to enhance aerial surveying, surveillance and rescue applications. The startup has developed six unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the aforementioned applications.

All its UAVs are equipped with multiple features like infrared sensors, thermal cameras, magnetometers, and fail-safes mechanisms such as return to home on communication breakdown.

It has also built an agricultural spraying drone – Agri – which features a 17 L storage tank for pesticides, fertilisers and other agrochemicals for precision spraying.

While the startup has yet to raise equity funding, Aero360 has partnered with Indian Coast Guard and Indian Army for surveillance purposes.

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AOTOM TECHNOLOGY

• Founded In: 2018
• Founders: Krunal Kalbende
• Funding Raised To Date: $100K
• Investors: Krunal Kalbende
• Headquarters: Nagpur

Aotom Technology works in the field of drone technology, geophysical services, AI, data analytics, face recognition and blockchain technology.

The startup offers machine learning services, regression techniques, deep neural networks, pattern recognition, cognitive intelligence, NLP/text mining, visual/audio entity tagging, and text captioning, among others to examine a human face and the surface of the earth. 

Its expertise helps it select an appropriate algorithm based on the data structure, patterns and desired outcomes. Coupled with its experience in digital technologies, platforms and the business domain, the startup offers comprehensive solutions and services for business and technology teams of enterprises to apply AI/ML in various lines of business.

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Asteria Aerospace

• Founded In: 2011
• Founders: Neel Mehta, Nihar Vartak
• Funding Raised To Date: INR 23.12 Cr
• Investors: Reliance Industries
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

Asteria is a robotics and AI startup that offers drone-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions and builds drones for industries such as defence, agriculture, oil and gas, mining and construction, telecommunications, and energy.   

Its products include DGCA-certified micro-sized drone A200, small-sized multirotor drone A410, and a vertical take-off and landing aircraft drone AT-15. 

In December 2019, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) bought 51.78% equity in Asteria for INR 23.12 Cr. During that time, RIL shared that it would infuse an additional INR 125 Cr in the startup to increase its stake to 87.3% by December 2021. 

In the financial year 2021, its operating revenue stood at INR 8 Cr and net loss was at INR 8.2 Cr. 

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BharatRohan

• Founded In: 2016
• Founders: Amandeep Panwar, Rishabh Chaudhary
• Funding Raised To Date: $0.33K
• Investors: Upaya Social Ventures, Acumen Fund Inc 
• Headquarters: Hyderabad 

BharatRohan is a tech-enabled agri-enabler that provides drone-based advisory services to around 6K farmers across 30K acre farms in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The startup provides a four-part service that is intended to optimise input usage, minimise crop losses and maximise profit margins. 

The startup also enables a marketplace where farmers can collaborate with different companies via contract farming. While farmers can buy raw materials such as pesticides and seeds from sellers, the FMCG, retail and exporter companies can buy agri-commodities from the farmers’ fields.

While BharatRohan is categorically an agritech startup, the use of drones is the product’s USP. With a drone, the startup generates a detailed map of a farm that characterises specific agronomic issues including nutrient deficiencies, disease infections, as well as pest and weed infestations. 

Its drones and satellite-based remote sensing imagery of fields, along with the corresponding historical climate and weather records, helps BharatRohan provide value addition to farmers to optimise their outputs. 

In March 2022, it raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Upaya Social Ventures and Acumen Fund Inc.

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Dhaksha Unmanned Systems

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Ramanathan Narayanan
• Funding Raised To Date: Undisclosed
• Investors: Dare Ventures 
• Headquarters: Chennai 

Dhaksha Unmanned offers seven drone-based solutions for sectors such as agriculture, mining, defence and surveillance. It manufactures battery-operated and petrol engine-based drones. 

In September, the startup received an undisclosed amount of funding from Coromandel International’s venture capital arm Dare Ventures. 

Prior to that, the Chennai-based startup along with 13 other drone companies got selected for the government’s PLI scheme that stimulates manufacturing drones and drone components in India. 

Interestingly, its drone named AgriGator has received ‘Type Certificate’ from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), according to its website.

It reported a revenue of INR 3 Cr while its profit stood at INR 2.3 Cr in the financial year 2020, according to Tofler. 

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DroneAcharya Aerial

• Founded In: 2017
• Founder: Prateek Srivastava 
• Funding Raised To Date: NA
• Investors: Shankar Sharma, Aegis Investment Fund, Maven India Fund, Nav Capital VCC-NAV Capital Emerging Star Fund, Zinnia Global Fund
• Headquarters: Pune

DroneAcharya offers drone-based enterprise solutions to several industries such as oil and gas, mining, infrastructure, and agriculture. It also provides training for drone piloting, drone building, drone data processing, and using industrial drone applications, among others. 

In early December 2022, the listed drone startup secured INR 9.66 Cr in a pre-IPO round from Aegis Investment Fund, Maven India Fund, Nav Capital VCC-NAV Capital Emerging Star Fund, and Zinnia Global Fund. 

On the first day of its IPO, it saw a positive response and got subscribed 22.94 times. It was trading at INR 156.25 on the BSE as on 10 February 2023. 

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EndureAir Systems

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Dr. Abhishek, Rama Krishna, Chirag Jain, Dr. Mangal Kothari
• Funding Raised To Date: INR 13.5 Cr
• Investors: Sangeet Kumar, Prateek Jain, Bir Singh, Satish Kumar Shukla, Amit Kumar, Jalaj Dani
• Headquarters: Noida

Endure Air Systems offers personalised unmanned drones that can be utilised for various functions including border surveillance, logistics and aerial mapping, among others. 

In July, the drone startup secured INR 13.5 Cr in its seed funding round from Jalaj Dani from Asian Paints and founders of Addverb Technologies.

During that time frame, it claims to have manufactured more than 10 products. The startup holds five patents in landing technology and vertical takeoff segments. 

Additionally, it has collaborated with various government agencies including Uttar Pradesh Police, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), among others to date. 

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Enercomp Solutions

• Founded In: 2013
• Founders: Jatin Patel
• Funding Raised To Date: $660K
• Investors: ah! Ventures 
• Headquarters: Ahmedabad

AI drone startup Enercomp offers service with UAV ‘drones’ and a variety of sensors for efficient and reliable data acquisition and processing, providing high standards analytics to gain insights into the data. 

“We had around 90% of revenue coming from the B2B sector and from the drone services business. We are launching our drones and our GIS platform and in fact, we have booked orders of around INR 35 lakh for products. With our strong positioning in the survey/inspection business, we aim to achieve the target of INR 2.5 crore in the current financial year with an increased share in the B2G business as well (around 40% of target revenue),” said Jatin Patel.

With its proprietary tech, Enercomp’s solutions have capabilities to cater to diverse sectors ranging from agriculture to industrial services to defence. 

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Enord

• Founded In: 2021
• Founders: Muhammad Anas, Zain Saeed
• Funding Raised To Date: NA 
• Investors: NA 
• Headquarters: Delhi

Enord designs and develops an AI pilot drone, INSPECTOR, for B2B sector and government agencies. Its drone mainly conducts inspection of high-power transmission lines, telco-towers and thermal lines. Its drone also carries out inspections of day-to-day operations in various sectors.

Explaining its product offering, the startup shared that its AI drone INSPECTOR is operated in confined spaces without GPS or human intervention. It gives insights into how to improve operational efficiency of its clients. 

The startup is recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and is being incubated at IIITD Innovation and Incubation Center, according to its LinkedIn profile.

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FlytBase

• Founded In: 2017
• Founders: Nitin Gupta 
• Funding Raised To Date: NA   
• Investors: NA
• Headquarters: Pune 

FlytBase offers drone-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions for surveillance and security, public safety, and construction. It also offers cloud-based software solutions to manage drone deliveries.

In November last year, it partnered with avionics tech company Iris Automation to integrate Iris’ Casia G ground-based detect and alert system with FlytNow. 

In December 2020, it had secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from early-stage VCs and angel investors. 

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Garuda Aerospace 

• Founded In: 2015
• Founders: Agnishwar Jayaprakash
• Funding Raised To Date:  $5 Mn
• Investors: Ocgrow Ventures, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
• Headquarters: Chennai 

Garuda Aerospace designs, builds and customises drones for multiple purposes such as event photography, agricultural survey, reconnaissance and surveillance. Its product offerings include agri mapping, surveillance (drone), solar panel cleaning, seed dropping, loudspeaker, UGV, and Fixed-wing VTOL drone, among others. 

Notably, Garuda is one of the four drone startups that have partnered with the foodtech unicorn Swiggy for drone grocery delivery trials in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR. Besides, it has received orders of more than 8,000 drones from several countries including Malaysia, Panama, and UAE. 

In 2020, it carried out sanitisation operations in PM Narendra Modi’s electoral constituency. Its drones and pilots were also employed for disinfecting hospitals, public spaces and societies in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Chattisgarh. 

Earlier In June, Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni invested in Garuda Aerospace. As a part of the deal, Dhoni joined its cap table and also became its brand ambassador. A month ago, the drone startup secured investment from Ocgrow Ventures along with a few angel investors from the banking sector. 

Recently, its founder shared plans of raising $100 Mn-$150 Mn in Series B funding in 2023 at a valuation of $500 Mn-$600 Mn. The startup also aims to sell 25K drones in the next eight months and export 10K drones to 100 countries in the next 12-15 months. 

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General Aeronautics

• Founded In: 2016
• Founders: Abhishek Burman, Kota Harinarayana and Anutosh Moitra
• Funding Raised To Date:  INR 6.5 Cr
• Investors: Mela Ventures, Adani Defence 
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

General Aeronautics, which was incubated at the Indian Institute of Science, offers drone-based solutions for crop protection services, farming, and yield monitoring services in the agriculture sector. Besides, it also offers medical solutions to government agencies and private organisations. Its team holds decades of experience working in research and development organisations across the globe. 

General Aeronautics provides an end-to-end crop protection solution that comprises agri drones named Krishak, an agri app and hub, as well as mapping and survey drones. Krishaks are employed for spraying agrochemicals, fertilisers and speciality nutrients. It sprays 50 droplets per sq cm and has the ability to cover 100 acres of land in a day. 

In May, Adani Enterprises’ subsidiary, Adani Defence Systems and Technologies acquired a 50% stake in General Aeronautics in an all-cash deal. Prior to this, the drone startup secured INR 6.5 Cr in its Pre-Series A funding round from Mela Ventures. 

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ideaForge

• Founded In: 2007
• Founders: Ankit Mehta, Ashish Bhat, Rahul Singh, Vipul Joshi
• Funding Raised To Date: $38.4 Mn
• Investors: Blacksoil, Infosys, Qualcomm Ventures, Indian Army
• Headquarters: Mumbai

Drone manufacturing startup ideaForge makes UAV systems for inspection, surveillance and mapping. Its solutions are used across sectors such as defence, homeland security, mining, construction, agriculture, energy and utilities.

As per its website, ideaForge has 20 patents and has completed more than 220K end customer missions. Its customers include the Indian Army, Navy, Air Force, all CAPFs (CRPF, BSF, NSG, etc), state police forces and Indian Railways, Survey of India, TAFE, NTPC, DRDO and L&T.

It has designed its vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAVs to help the Indian Army to have access to clear airspace or a runway. As a part of its contract with the Indian Army, the drone startup shall deliver 200 systems soon to augment the Army’s surveillance capabilities.

Thus, its high altitude version has a service ceiling of 6,000 mtr therefore, can do high altitude missions across even the high tension borders in the north and west. Its flagship product is SWITCH UAV, a 6 kg VTOL that can fly for more than two hours on a single charge.

In April, it bagged $20 Mn in its Series B funding round from several investors including Florintree, Celesta, Infosys, Qualcomm, Infina and Exim Bank of India, among others.

As of Today (11 February, 2023), it reportedly filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an IPO. Its public issue will comprise a fresh issue of shares worth INR 300 Cr and an offer for sale (OFS) of approximately 48.7 Lakh shares.

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Indrones

• Founded In: 2015
• Founders: Pravin Prajapati
• Funding Raised To Date: INR 7 Cr
• Investors: MapmyIndia
• Headquarters: Mumbai

Founded in 2015 by Pravin Prajapati, Indrones is a mapping startup that deploys drones to carry out topographic surveys, volumetric estimations, 3D modelling, and data collection.

Indrones manufactures three drones: the Sigma 25, Sigma 75, and Vector VTOL. The three drones have a flight ceiling between 400 m and 5,000 m, making them useful for different types of use cases, including construction, railways, disaster management, agriculture, mining and oil & gas.

Apart from manufacturing drones, Indrones also has a Drone as a Service (DaaS) platform. Indrones has raised a total funding of INR 7 Cr to date from MapmyIndia.

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IoTechWorld 

• Founded In: 2017
• Founders: Anup Kumar Upadhyay, Deepak Bhardwaj
• Funding Raised To Date: $4 Mn 
• Investors: Dhanuka Agritech
• Headquarters: Delhi NCR

IoTechWorld is a drone Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) that makes drones for applications in agriculture, survey and surveillance. The startup has four products – an Agribot (a-DGCA approved agri-spray drone); a Surveybot (a DGCA-approved drone with LiDar and high-resolution camera, typically useful for defence purposes, Drishti comes with a range of payloads including EOIR, thermals, zoom cameras, radars, LiDars and Heavybot is used for logistics. Heavybot can carry up to 10 Kg payload. 

IoTechWorld plans to encourage indigenous products under the ‘Make In India’ initiative. It intends to expand its sales network and company-owned service stations in 10 states in India. It has about 25 dealers across India and would raise the number to 100 in future. IoTechWorld would launch its high-endurance drone models which can go up to 50-100 km. 

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Marut Drones

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Prem Kumar Vislawath, Sai Kumar, Suraj Peddi
• Funding Raised To Date: NA
• Investors: Kiran Darsi and Parusharam
• Headquarters: Hyderabad

Founded by three IIT alumni, Marut Drones is one of the pioneering agricultural drone manufacturers in the country. 

The startup has developed drone-based agri-intelligence and agri-automation solutions for precision agriculture and the early detection of crop disease. Marut has been extensively collaborating with the Indian government to further facilitate the usage of Kisan drones for better agricultural productivity and more sustainable farming.

The startup has so far built four different drone models – Agricopter, Seedcopter, Marut ZAP, and Hepicopter. Its DGCA Type certified Agricopter, AG 365, serves across multiple applications – from seeing to harvesting. The startup claims to have sprayed over 10K acres of land.

Meanwhile, its Seedcopter solution has been made for rapid afforestation. The drone has planted over 50 Lakh seed balls across three states. Recently, the startup launched drone seeding in and around Agra and Ferozabad districts in UP.

Besides agri drones, Marut has built ZAP – a mosquito eradication drone. Further, its Hepicopter is a Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) medical delivery drone.

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NewSpace Research & Technologies

• Founded In: 2017
• Founders: Rajinder Rana and Sameer Joshi.
• Funding Raised To Date: $21 Mn
• Investors: Pavestone Capital
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

Bengaluru-based NewSpace also has an office in Delhi-NCR. It has signed contracts with the Indian government for delivering products to the armed forces. The startup specialises in swarm drones and is associated with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to develop products for surveillance and communications.

NewSpace has already delivered SWARM drones to the Indian Army. A swarm of 100 drones can be used for hitting targets at least 50 km into enemy territory.

The startup also plans to manufacture drones for civil uses. NewSpace uses technologies such as unmanned aerial systems, collective robotics, GPS-denied operations, augmented reality, virtual reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

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Omnipresent Robot Technologies

• Founded In: 2010
• Founders: Aakash Sinha
• Funding Raised To Date: NA
• Investors: Gruhas Proptech (Nikhil Kamath, Abhijeet Pai)
• Headquarters: Delhi

Omnipresent Robot Technologies is an industrial drone and robotics solutions provider that became the first drone company in the country to receive full clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs to conduct trials for long-range BVLOS operations in 2020.

Operational since 2010, Omnipresent has developed drone solutions for varied use cases, including survey, surveillance, and inspection, automated mapping, and precision agriculture, as well as in ecommerce, food, and medical delivery. 

During the pandemic, it worked with some government bodies to deploy drones for ensuring social distancing.

Omnipresent has also become one of the beneficiaries of the Indian government’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for drone and drone components.

In 2022, the startup raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Nikhil Kamath and Abhijeet Pai’s investment firm Gruhas Proptech. The round also saw the participation of Kavin Shah and other high-net-worth individuals (HNIs).

As a robotics firm, Omnipresent has also worked on the Chandrayaan-2 project by developing navigation software for the Chandrayaan-2 rover.

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Optimized Electrotech

• Founded In: 2017
• Founders: Anil Yekkala, Dharin Shah, Kuldeep Saxena, Purvi Shah, Sandeep Shah
• Funding Raised To Date: $2.8 Mn
• Investors: Starburst Accelerator and Venture Catalysts
• Headquarters: Ahmedabad

Defence tech startup Optimized Electrotech produces indigenous surveillance systems for security forces, national assets, defence and aerospace companies. 

It provides accurate, actionable and real-time insights about surroundings through autonomous, field-upgradable, secure platforms, as claimed by the startup.

The startup would like to design new-age surveillance systems, product innovations, and build more prototypes to be used in the railways sector, smart city and intelligent border projects.

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Redwing Labs

• Founded In: 2018
• Founders: Anshul Sharma, Arunabha Bhattacharya, Rishabh Gupta
• Funding Raised To Date: $120K
• Investors:  Asymmetry Ventures and Techstars 
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

Redwing Labs, the Bengaluru-based drone logistics system startup designs, manufactures and operates autonomous drone logistics systems. It aims at enhancing the last-mile healthcare supply chains. 

The initial idea behind the formation of the startup was to create drones for medical supplies and deliveries. Currently, the startup does around 80 deliveries a day. The last-mile delivery drone features climate control to enable temperature-sensitive deliveries such as vaccines.

According to the company’s website, the team has received a total of 15 awards in the United States of America and Asia-Pacific for best-performance drones and has been felicitated by key government agencies and industry giants in the US such as NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Airbus.

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Skye Air

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Swapnik Jakkampudi, Ankit Kumar and Chandra Prakash
• Funding Raised To Date: $1.7 Mn
• Investors: LetsVenture, Chiratae Ventures, Lead Angels, O2 Angels, Agility Ventures 
• Headquarters: Delhi

Skye Air is a drone delivery startup largely focussed on healthcare, ecommerce, quick commerce, and agri commodity sectors. Its first BVLOS flight took off in September 2021.

Skye Air operates across several Indian states, including Kerala, Maharashtra, Haryana, and Meghalaya, from its shared and dedicated hubs. Since 2021, it has done numerous trials with companies such as Dunzo, Flipkart Health+, Curefoods, Tata 1mg, and Redcliffe Labs.

In June last year, Aster DM Healthcare and Skye Air initiated trials for essential medicines and critical lab sample delivery using drones from Kozhikode to Areekode in Kerala.

The startup claims that its drones have taken 2,150 flights so far, covering a total of 11,500 km and delivering 7,500 kg of items.

In November last year, Skye Air raised $1.7 Mn in its seed funding round led by Chiratae Ventures. 

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Skylark Drones

• Founded In: 2015
• Founders: Mrinal Pai, Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy
• Funding Raised To Date: $3 Mn 
• Investors: InfoEdge Ventures, IAN Fund, AdvantEdge Founders, Fowler Westrup, Redstart Labs, IKP, Vimson Group 
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

Skylark Drones provides end-to-end drone-based solutions that offer insights to help businesses scale. 

Its drones provide business intelligence to enterprises and believe industries ranging from infrastructure, mining, agriculture, utilities to oil & gas could benefit immensely from the reach, efficiency and productivity that drones offer. 

Skylark aims to provide geospatial intelligence to enterprises with its product called Spectra and Drone Mission Ops. Spectra enables worksite intelligence, several platform integrations and API access. Drone Mission Ops, on the other hand, enables project and fleet management for large enterprises and individual operators to plan and execute drone missions. 

Skylark’s computer vision software analyses aerial imagery to offer industry-specific insights to its clients.

The startup plans to further enhance insights from its drone data, to aid and simplify superior business decisions and strategy for its clients. It also intends to spur international product expansion and development of its drone data analytics-based products. 

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TechEagle Innovations

• Founded In: 2015
• Founders: Vikram Singh Meena, Anshu Abhishek
• Funding Raised To Date: $500K
• Investors: India Accelerator, Vinners Group, Sitics Logistics 
• Headquarters: Delhi NCR 

TechEagle is a drone logistics airline startup for last and mid-mile deliveries. To make its vision a reality, TechEagle has already received approvals from the government of India (MoCA) and the regulators (DGCA) to conduct package delivery BVLOS (beyond the visual line of sight) flights in various parts of the country. 

The startup plans to launch new indigenous products, scale operations in India, and hire across functions.

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Throttle Aerospace Systems

• Founded In: 2016
• Founders: Nagendran Kandasamy
• Investors: Neosky
• Headquarters:  Bengaluru

Throttle Aerospace offers drone solutions to the mining and agriculture sectors. Besides, its drones are also employed for capturing aerial images, and surveillance purposes. Its team holds over 15 years of experience in designing, engineering, manufacturing, software development and supply chain in the aerospace and defence industries. 

As per the website, Throttle is the first DGCA-approved drone manufacturer for civil drones. It has also got a licence from the Ministry of Defense for manufacturing military drones. Its manufacturing facility is spread across 10,000 sq ft in Kolar, Karnataka. 

In May, RattanIndia Enterprises’ subsidiary NeoSky acquired a 60% stake in Throttle Aerospace for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition would facilitate Neosky in offering all types of drone solutions including drones as a product (DAAP) and drone as a service (DAAS) etc to customers.

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TSAW Drones

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Kishan Tiwari, Rimanshu Pandey
• Funding Raised To Date: INR 2.5 Cr
• Investors: We Founder Circle, Soonicorn Ventures, Chandigarh Angels Network, POD World, Qubit Capital, Zypp Electric, PedalStart, Kartik Hajela
• Headquarters: Delhi

TSAW Drones is a drone manufacturing startup based out of IIT Delhi, which works with companies to enable logistics via drones. The startup participated in the recently concluded Aero India Show 2023.

TSAW Drones’ logistics arm, DRONECO, facilitates a point-to-point drone delivery supply chain in urban and remote or rural areas of the nation. Users can also track their deliveries in real-time.

The startup provides last-mile delivery services via its three drones – Adarna V2, Adarna Mini and Maruthi 3.1. These drones have a range of 40 to 120 km and a payload capacity of 2 to 20 kg.

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UrbanMatrix

• Founded In: 2019
• Founders: Rishabh Verma, Ashutosh Kumar, Divyanshu Pundir, Chitransh Chauhan
• Funding Raised To Date: $497K
• Investors: Sara Elgi, Laxminarayana 
• Headquarters: Bengaluru

Urban Matrix Technologies specialises in micro drones and enables industries to easily leverage the power of aerial data by building compliant drone hardware, with proprietary software solutions. 

The founders spotted a gap between the available drone options and industry requirements. Taking photos and videos was not enough, industries require seamless integration of aerial data with their ongoing workflow in order to make real-time decisions that can save time and cost. The startup addressed this by generating actionable data via a dedicated cloud-based platform – UMT Console.

“For a long time, drone technology was limited to military applications. But now, commercial drones are rising with industries adopting them. A time when drones will become an essential part of human civilisation is much nearer than you have imagined,” said Rishabh Verma, CEO of UrbanMatrix Technologies.

UrbanMatrix has expertise in designing and manufacturing industrial drone systems along with world-class proprietary software infrastructure. It allows enterprises to not only control and manage drones but also effortlessly draw functional insights using integrated aerial data processing tools. 

The startup plans to work towards strengthening research and development, deepening market penetration and delivering industry-oriented solutions across verticals. 

The startup lately set a record by flying a drone from a distance of 3,000 Km via 4G technology. It flew the drone in Bengaluru while controlling the whole flight from Dubai.

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VECROS

• Founded In: 2018
• Founders: Besta Prem Sai, Sai Allu
• Funding Raised To Date: $68.49K 
• Investors: IIT Delhi, NSRCEL-IIMB, STARTUP OASIS, 100xVC, NVIDIA 
• Headquarters: Delhi NCR

Vecros is a drone tech startup. Its drones have embedded cameras and CPUs that can mimic human behaviour which help them achieve greater autonomy.

The startup that specialises in ML, aerial robotics, control system, robotics sensor tech, and autopilots began as a small student group working on drones from the IIT Delhi campus, where its first aerial robot was developed. Today, Vecros has developed JETPIX™, an operating system for drones, that uses AI and computer vision algorithms to make intelligent decisions so that the drones can match the capabilities of a pilot.

Vecro’s solutions are intended for industrial AI applications that centralise around surveillance and optimising and providing enhanced stack or fleet management. It provides solutions to agriculture, mining, construction and oil and gas industries.

Vecros claims its drones can fly without any pilot input around complex environments. The drone startup aims to sell at least 1,000 drones by the end of 2022 and would expand its team and resources to help achieve its goal. 

Further, it is planning to establish a manufacturing plant and an R&D centre with the help of IIT Delhi and DST to boost further state-of-the-art technology in drones. 

This is a running article, we will keep adding more names to the list

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Last updated on August 10, 2023.