Food tech startup Swiggy and airspace management company ANRA Technologies recently announced that the ANRA Technologies-led consortium has received final clearance form government authorities including Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Civil Aviation to commence drone trials in India. The clearance will allow the consortia to begin trials for Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) drone deliveries for food and medicine.
Over the last few months, ANRA Technologies has worked hard for planning, training, air traffic control integration, risk assessments, preparation of equipment, and coordination. The airspace management firm launched its first sorties on Wednesday, June 16. Over the course of next few weeks, the team is set to start BVLOS food and medicine deliveries in Etah and Rupnagar districts of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively. According to the principle program manager at Swiggy, Shilpa Gnaneshwar, Swiggy’s partnership with ANRA will allow the food delivery platform to leverage long-range proficiencies of drone technology and achieve groundbreaking results. In a video demonstrating first test flight, ANRA’s team showed how food and medicine packages can be efficiently delivered using medium-sized drones. Food packages tend to weigh in a range limiting to 1kg and these packages can be seamlessly picked up by medium-sized drones that have a weight capacity of 3-4 kgs. The BVLOS delivery operations will be carried out by ANRA SmartSkies CTR and SmartSkies DELIVERY platforms that enhance drone operations’ implementation and regulation in controlled and uncontrolled airspace.
CEO and founder of ANRA, Amit Ganjoo said the major motivation for the team is knowing that the drone technology will soon help in efficient and timely delivery of food and healthcare packages to the underserved population in the country. ANRA technologies and partners will leverage collected data and critical insights from the drones to support development of Digital Sky, India’s national operational UAD Traffic Management platform. The consortia will also study the exchanges and settlement between open implementations and interoperability to understand technical prerequisites for functionality. Along with Swiggy, the consortium also includes drone delivery provider BetterDrones and Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar and will aim at food delivery. ANRA leads two consortium for this initiative and the second consortium, focusing on medicine and healthcare deliveries, includes ANRA and Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar.
