Majority of users don't expect to pay extra for drone deliveries: LocalCircles report

LocalCircles sees the majority of drone deployment to be implemented in areas like border surveillance, disaster monitoring and farming, according to a survey on top use cases for drones over the next 5 years.

Community and consumer platform LocalCircles said only 23% of respondents see drone deliveries being used for shipment of ecommerce, food and medicines. Additionally, only 6% of respondents indicated a willingness to pay for drone deliveries on such orders, while about 87% of the respondents said they "wouldn't want to pay anything extra."

This comes as quick commerce, ecommerce and logistics players test out drones for last mile deliveries, especially on a chargeable basis.

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A major challenge for drone delivery plans is the DGCA regulation that restricts all drone operations to Visual Line of Sight (VLOS). This requires pilots to keep direct visual contact with drones, limiting their range compared to Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), which allows control beyond the pilot's sight.

In 2022, the government had allowed the private players to use drones for delivery purposes subject to compliances. Prior to that, government had been using drones in recent years for tasks like inspecting oil pipelines, power lines, anti-locust operations, agricultural spraying, and land and mine surveys.

This is reiterated when about 91% of LocalCircles survey respondents still saw drone deployments over the next five years to be driven by surveillance and border security, while 80% of the respondents see disaster monitoring and relief as a key emerging use cases.

About 47% respondents see drones being used for surveillance in cities, while 30% see it being used for monitoring farms for the health of crops and spray them with fertilizer and pesticides, to produce accurate volumetric measurements and yield estimation.