Camera drones most popular

But, while flying a drone without permission may be illegal, purchasing one isn’t. Drones with miniature cameras are available for a little under Rs3,000. Among the most popular are the camera drones from DJI, a Chinese company whose drones weigh from 250 g to 4 kg. Since you can’t import them directly, you will have to buy them from an Indian retailer. Such drones are primarily used for film shooting, event coverage, surveying, and photography. RPAS Aerial Solutions, a Hyderabad-based start-up, specialises in training drone operators for such roles. The start-up was founded in 2018 by Mehernosh Bazun Dittia and Jamien Rao.

A Price Waterhouse Cooper report mentions that the drone space in India is catching up with other nations. According to 6Wresearch, the Indian UAV market is poised to grow at a CAGR of 18 per cent during 2017–23 in terms of revenue. Although these numbers will continue to be led by the long-range UAV segment, medium and mini-UAVs are also poised to register healthy growth. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicates that with 22.5 per cent of the world’s UAV imports, India tops the list of drone-importing nations.

While these are primarily for military purposes, commercial drones are showing healthy growth too. According to a study conducted by BIS Research, the commercial end-use drone market might overtake the military market by 2021, cumulatively hitting approximately $900 million. This matches with the Ministry of Civil Aviation estimate of $886 million, still far short of the global market of $21.47 billion. To tap into the opportunities in this space, India must regularly guide technology standards and upgrade its policy framework accordingly.

Rotary blade models

Of the various types of drones available, rotary blade models dominated the Indian commercial drone market in 2019 owing to their special advantage of vertical landing and take-off. Also, they could hover at one particular point and are best suited for short-range applications. However, significant growth is recorded in fixed-wing drones due to their simple structure and longer duration at high speeds. Mapping and surveying fetch the maximum revenue share due to the high accuracy and quality provided by such drones with relatively less manpower and low cost. Also, recently, the government of India has employed drones for 3D digital mapping for road widening on the Allahabad highway.

To ensure a steady supply of qualified drone pilots, several flight schools have received the green light from the DGCA to train drone pilots. One of the first was Gurugram’s Redbird Flight Training Academy. It recently rolled out India’s first 15 drone pilots, who were trained on a 2.8-kg-class drone called the P1, manufactured by Mumbai-based Rays Aviation. At the graduation ceremony held at RFTA’s Baramati complex, the academy’s vice president Abhilasha Singh said the pilots had bright prospects in the fields of public safety, journalism, filmmaking, construction, real estate, disaster management, last-mile delivery, and geographical surveying.

Multiple applications 

Drones have provided some much-needed air support in the fight against Covid-19. Chennai-based Garuda Aerospace’s ‘corona-killer’ drones did a stellar job of disinfecting large open spaces, hospitals, offices, restaurants, public parks, railway stations, and car parking lots in many cities across the country. As part of the Swachh Bharat campaign, Garuda Aerospace, an ISO-9001 company, deployed its Automated Disinfecting Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, which has a flight ceiling of up to 500 ft. To date, Garuda drones have been deployed in 26 cities across the country. 

Garuda Aerospace has also entered into agreements with the state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, and others as part of anti-locust drives, apart from meeting diverse needs such as agricultural survey, reconnaissance, and surveillance. They have executed several government orders over the past four years and have formed a unique drone aggregator platform that can supply over 16,000 drones from various associate companies if a massive cleaning campaign takes place.

The day is not far when the first responder to a crime scene will be a quad-copter drone packing a camera and loudspeaker system. Telangana’s IT Minister KT Rama Rao has already pitched for using drones for policing. He envisages a ‘panic-button’ installed either publicly, or as part of a mobile app to summon drone support instantly. A drone, with the location fed to its navigation system, would fly over and provide a live feed of the problem area.

According to ideaForge, a registered drone pilot can earn between Rs3 lakh and 6 lakh a year, with big ticket projects resulting in even higher incomes. Flying a drone will no longer be considered child’s play. 

ideaForge’s big strides

According to ideaForge, one of India’s largest drone manufacturers, the Drones Directorate is an important step in making India the drone capital of the world. The company is based in Navi Mumbai and is a licensed manufacturer of UAVs approved by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). ideaForge works closely with the Survey of India as part of the Swayamvita Yojana, a project to map six lakh villages across India to update land ownership records.

The CEO, Ankit Mehta, also said that companies are releasing the low cost of drone operations, and despite the pandemic, have been seeing a spike in enquiries from the public and private sector. Most recently, the Indian Railways purchased nine Ninja UAVs at a cost of Rs32 lakh for the Railway Protection Force. ideaForge has a 90 per cent share of the Indian drone market. Currently, the organisation has deployed over 800 systems and has over 1,300 pilots in service.