Coverage on Indian Drone Arena H1'2024

Indian drone arena offers a mixed bag....

Recent conversations with Rajan Luthra, Neel Mehta and Secretary DGCA, GoI got some interesting views around demand, supply and regulatory oversight:-

👉 Demand : Over last couple of years demand has been driven largely by public sector enablements focused on government's mission to double farmers income through drone based spraying solutions or those for defense use cases. Enterprise demand is still awaited!

👉 Supply : Neel's been quite vocal in highlighting the broken funding piece (very few VCs interested in drone hardware space) and broken value chain (strong comparison to auto space where different players build different solutions, in drone tech - one player acting across hardware, tech and SI all together)

👉 Regulatory oversight : Secretary Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) very well conveyed that tighter regulatory oversight is a mindset coming from the way traditional vigilance and safety is needed for civil aviation flights and relaxations will come in due time

Had couple of more discussions around limited grants, low focus by VCs and enterprise funds which took me back in time when I supported Himanshu Mishra and Col KV Kuber at EY in their global drone research. Thanks for invite team Confederation of Indian Industry

How do you see the space evolving? Lets connect to discuss more:)