Drones have a wide range of applications and need large manufacturing units and software companies to support the entire ecosystem. Thousands of jobs will be created by this technology and India will be at the forefront of this revolution. Even if drones are not being used at large scale by individual entities and industries, with the positive momentum coming in this sector, everyone is looking at adopting these technologies at large scale.
TechEagle Innovations Pvt. Ltd., is a pioneer and leading drone delivery company in India, making and deploying world-class drone delivery solutions for healthcare, e-commerce, hyperlocal, maritime, and defence applications. Founded in 2015 by IIT Kanpur alumni, it has become one of the very first companies to receive approvals from DGCA, MoCA, AAI and MHA to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) trials for package delivery via Drones in India.
In an exclusive interview with Insights Success, Vikram Singh Meena – Founder and CEO of TechEagle shares the dynamics of the company. Following are the highlights of the interview:
Describe your company/firm/profession in detail.
TechEagle enables enterprises around the world to transport any on-demand item, be it Influenza vaccine from a distribution center to PHC/CHC or an Ice-cream from store to door.
TechEagle has already created a history by doing:
- a) World’s first tea delivery by drones in Lucknow, UP in the year 2018.
- b) Asia’s first cold chain vaccine delivery by drones in the state of Telangana with World Economic Forum’s-Medicine from the Sky Project.
Recently, TechEagle has raised $0.5 Million in seed round from marquee investors. TechEagle is working on some cutting-edge tech products and partnerships to further strengthen its offerings.
What made you venture into the field of drone technology solution?
Flying vehicles/objects were always a thing of fascination for me. Since 2012, during our IIT Kanpur days, we have been doing R&D of long-range payload delivery drones. Vikram is from a rural background and understands the real pain points and gaps in the current super slow and expensive logistics in rural and remote parts of the world. He witnessed a lot of people losing their lives because of snake bite and non-availability of critical `medicines on time. He had the perfect tech solution for a problem faced by the majority of the people in rural and remote areas. This led him to turn his hobby and passion into starting a full-time drone delivery startup-TechEagle.
What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?
TechEagle has 3 categories of turnkey drone delivery solutions for enterprises that are into healthcare, e-commerce, hyperlocal, freight forwarding, maritime and defence logistics:
- Drone as a Service (DAAS): TechEagle creates a drone delivery network with hub and spoke model for its partners and provides it as a platform service and charges on weight, volume, and distance basis.
- Drone on Sale: We offer end-to-end drone delivery solutions (hardware and software) on sale for our international partners/clients.
- Drones on lease: Companies who don’t want to own drones but still want to run the drone delivery operations by themselves, we offer full turnkey solutions on lease model.
What kind of challenges have you faced while entering the drone technology solution sector?
The major challenges are as follows:
- No set of rules for drones in the country.
- The regulators were skeptical about enabling Drones in India.
- Close to no investment in the Drone industry because of the lack of responsiveness from the Govt.
- Close to zero acceptability of Drones in society because of how the media used to put it on the screens.
How was your firm/business affected in these pandemic times and what were the steps taken by you to curb the damages all the while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?
Being a hardware plus software startup, it affected us very badly during the Lockdown. Our office was shut and production as well as R&D came to a halt. But we took the lead and supported our Police forces in monitoring and ensuring the lockdown with drone-based surveillance and AI enabled crowd analysis. That put our team into ground operations and with all safety and precautions we served the country in the pandemic. PPE Kits, regular sanitisation and social distancing helped us in keeping our teams safe.
What would you like to advise the young generation of entrepreneurs and enthusiasts who want to venture into the field of drone technology?
TechEagle is also a young startup. But with my limited experience, I would like to give first advice to young entrepreneurs that you need not to learn everything from your own stupid mistakes rather try to learn majority of things from others’ mistakes. Secondly, this is the best time to be in drone space and try to serve a niche market instead of replicating what others are already doing. This will help you in keeping a focused approach with minimal resources that everyone has at the start.
Where do you envision your firm/business to be in the long run and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your industry?
We are very much focused towards enabling drone deliveries for all types of products across the world and we are pioneers and see ourselves leading the drone logistics sector. Changes like Drone Rules 2021, PLI Scheme and Airspace maps getting released are welcomed by industry at large. We are on the front line adopting all the new changes in the industry and ready to scale with our seed round of funding.
