ideaForge seeks to nurture an ecosystem for wider adoption of drones

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or ‘drones’ as they are popularly called, have evolved from being used by the defence forces and moved into civilian territory as well. They are proving to be useful in land mapping, delivery, logistics, and security.

ideaForge, a leading Indian drone company and the only pureplay drone company to be listed on the stock exchanges, is pushing the boundaries with respect to the use of these devices in civilian areas.

“Drones will eventually penetrate deeper, similar to other technology devices, and down to the lowest echelons,” says Ankit Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of Mumbai-based ideaForge, in an interview to SMB Story.

Mehta says drone tech is ready to evolve from the proof-of-concept stage to large-scale implementation. He believes the time is ripe for the adoption of drones and sees them playing a big role in surveillance, delivery, governance and security infrastructure. He also talks about the company’s growth prospects and its expansion outside India.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

SMB Story: What use cases do you see for drones in the civilian area?

Ankit Mehta (AM): In the case of surveillance, I do not think any city can physically cover more than 5% of the area using CCTVs, which means 95% of the area is not under observation. Here drones can become a very meaningful layer, and they are showing good results.

Delivery has multiple facets. One is last-mile delivery. Another facet which is critical is urgent deliveries. Then, of course, you have the delivery aspect of very large goods through drones. Presently, there is experimentation happening in trying to deliver to buildings and housing societies.

The more important and practical experimentation that’s happening is the delivery of medicines in remote areas.

The delivery of the middle mile, connecting the regional warehouses to the dark stores, is another vector that is going to come up.

So, India will definitely progress in all these directions. The progress on the civil side was slow thus far, but it’s going to pick up pace.

The next phase is going from proof of concept to scale, though in the case of geographic information system mapping, it has entered the adoption phase.

We will reap the highest dividends as a country if we start using this technology as part of the overall governance and security infrastructure of the country. This technology is ripe for becoming a part of that infrastructure. This is a proven technology and now is the phase for inducting it to its full scale.

SMB Story: What kind of benefits do you see with the increased usage of drones?

AM: As the use cases go up, intelligence also has to go up. Nobody wants merely data but (they want) analytics on this information. Everyone wants outcomes. For example, if enterprises are mapping a bare patch of land, they want to know how much earth they will have to move to plan the project better. So, now all of that volumetric estimation and analysis can be done using this (drone) technology with a very high degree of accuracy.

At IdeaForge, we have built a platform called Flight Cloud, wherein whenever somebody does a drone mapping, the data gets seamlessly uploaded to the cloud, and we do the post-processing of that data. Then we give it to an analytics provider who will do the specific analytics.

We also believe that it’s not possible for one company to do analytics for everything. So what we have decided is that we create a platform where anybody can offer their analytics to the end customer. We get to offer a complete solution to the end customer.

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There are other examples like orthorectified drone-created maps or health monitoring of crops where drones can give a micro view. (An orthorectified map is a map that has been processed to remove geometric distortions.)

Also getting data through drones is much more cost-effective.

SMB Story: Has the hardware aspect of drones become commoditised?

AM: The technology is commoditised enough, but there are many new nuances especially when it comes to critical use cases like defence, security or inspection. If any critical subsystem is imported from any country and is susceptible to espionage, then there is a risk of vulnerability there. One might particularly avoid that, especially when dealing with data intelligence.

I feel that hardware is going to have an important role to play in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in software, because if you don’t have better quality hardware, then software can’t do much.

Even though it will get commoditised, high-quality speciality hardware will be an important vector in the space. On top of that, software is critical.

SMB Story: How is ideaForge creating the ecosystem?

AM: We build very good hardware platforms for flying devices. Earlier we were offering the payloads that go on the platform ourselves only, and said that we don’t want anybody else to build payloads for us. But now we are realising that, as a company, we can only build some primary payloads which are useful but what if someone wants a hyperspectral camera, a gas sensor, or things like that. We cannot be building all of this. So, we are saying that this platform is available and one can build any use case based on the needs of the customers. Our partners can innovate with us.

SMB Story: What was the strategic intent behind ideaForge entering the United States?

AM: We try to look at geographies where people have the same heightened sense of national security and where they do not want solutions emanating from geographies of concern. The US is one such geography, and it is also the largest market opportunity. Even if it takes time, it is worth investing energy in that geography and trying to see if we can build a good product for that geography. For us, the markets will be India, the US, and some parts of Africa.

SMB Story: What are the future plans for ideaForge?

AM: There is always competition, and we have to be on our toes to build meaningful solutions for the end customers. They have to be technologically better every time and be offered at a competitive price point.

Secondly, I think the market will become much larger. Our focus in the near term will be to expand the market and demonstrate the capability of this technology for industries to adopt it at a much larger scale.

It is also our responsibility to demonstrate to the customers the visibility of outcomes. Our DNA is to make sure that technology is adopted, not just to make a sale.