By Gunja Sharan
Additionally, the Chennai-based business is preparing for a larger round of fundraising scheduled for June this year, which is expected to raise around $30 million in funds.
PM Narendra Modi unveiled ‘Make in India’ drone manufacturing facilities in February 2022, and according to the company creator, they’ve been swamped with orders ever since!.
The Garuda Group will use more than 300 drones and 500 pilots during the 2020 pandemic to clean healthcare facilities, public spaces, and hotels as well as commercial establishments in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, among other places.
In an undisclosed round of Pre-Series A fundraising, Ocgrow Ventures led Garuda Aerospace, a drone business. Some of the world’s most prominent investment bankers were also involved in the round.
According to insiders, the business in Chennai is also preparing for a larger fundraising round anticipated for June this year. The round is expected to raise $30 million in financing.
Garuda Aerospace, a drone-as-a-service (DaaS) firm founded in 2015 by Agnishwar Jayaprakash, designs, constructs, and customizes drones for a variety of uses.
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In addition to Malaysia, Panama, and the United Arab Emirates, the business has received orders for more than 8,000 drones, he said.
Following the introduction of the ‘Make in India’ drone manufacturing facilities by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February 2022, Garuda Aerospace’s founder and chief executive officer, Mr. Jayaprakash, stated the homegrown business had been inundated with orders.
It was in February that Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually unveiled a fleet of 100 agricultural drones that we’re able to carry out farm tasks simultaneously. Garuda Aerospace built these drones. An Indian firm has promised to produce 100,000 drones in the next two years, PM Modi tweeted.
Drones from Garuda have also been used in the country’s numerous disaster relief efforts. In Varanasi, the home constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the company’s drones will conduct sanitization operations in 2020.
In Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, Garuda used more than 300 drones and 500 pilots to sanitize hospitals, public areas, hotels, corporations, and societies.
Last month, Swiggy teamed with Garuda Aerospace for drone grocery delivery trials in Bengaluru and Delhi NCR after reviewing 345 other drone businesses, the food tech unicorn said in a blog post on the partnership.
Swiggy and ANRA Technologies collaborated on more than 300 food and medical deliveries by drone in December 2021.
A year ago, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) experimented with deploying drones to bring medication and food to the ISRO residential colony in Sullurpeta, Andhra Pradesh.
Drones from Garuda Aerospace are now being utilized to deliver medicine to Bengaluru’s hospitals after ISRO authorities heard about it. The experiments used three ‘White Knight’ drones made by Garuda Aerospace.
The DaaS model has been improved in the past few years, and Garuda Aerospace is currently engaged in long-term contracts with the Indian Highways Authority (NHA), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC), Godrej, and Vedanta among others.
To make India a worldwide drone hubby 2030, the central government has implemented several changes. This includes the Drone Rules, 2021, the Drone Airspace Map 2021, the UAS Traffic Management Policy Framework 2021, the Drone Certification Scheme 2022, and the Drone Import Policy, 2022, which prohibits the import of drones.
As opposed to the likes of the United States, China, and Israel, India has only roughly 180 active drone startups.
More than half-a-dozen certificates and licenses, including ones for security, insurance, and landowners’ approval is required by drone businesses in order to begin manufacturing facilities and services in the country, according to an Inc42 article. In addition to the application fee, there are a number of other fees that must be paid.
Source: INC42
