Skye Air Mobility to concentrate more on software services

The Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2021, was notified by the Centre on March 12.

Drone startup Skye Air Mobility will be concentrating more on developing its software platform in a bid to stave off rising competition from behemoths such as Reliance Industries and Adani Group, a top executive told Moneycontrol.

This is mainly because making and selling drones is time and capital intensive. By the time a drone reaches the manufacturing stage, the technology is already old, Ankit Kumar, CEO of Skye Air Mobility, said in an interview. Thus, the time to derive value from these drones is also limited.

Taking these constraints into account, the company took a decision to bet big on its software platform, which is still in the development phase.
According to Kumar, the plan is to lease or buy drones of bigger companies, such as the ones backed by Adani Enterprises or Reliance, integrate them with its in-house software and deploy them using its on-field team for e-commerce and food deliveries.

“If a Reliance or an Ambani is making a drone, we are not competing with them, we are buying drones from them or we will be leasing drones at a larger level to utilise our platform, and to provide services in the backend to our clients,” Kumar said.

Why the pivot?

In the last few years, Reliance Industries has bought significant stakes in SankhyaSutra Labs (in 2019) and Asteria Aerospace (in 2021). Energy company RattanIndia and tech major Infosys too have stakes in drone manufacturing entities. Adani Enterprises bought 50 percent of General Aeronautics in May 2022.

These developments have been significant keeping in mind that the drone ecosystem in the country has largely been spearheaded by startups—even when drones were banned by the government in 2014 and in the wake of subsequent legislations that were very restrictive.

With the industry now opened up due to policies such as the liberalised Drone Rules 2021, production-likened incentive scheme and others, the government pegs investments of Rs 5,000 crore on the manufacturing side, and envisages a Rs 30,000-crore industry on the drone services side over the next three years.

It is not surprising that the industry is garnering the attention of big players, which also raises questions on how the smaller players will compete.

The beginning

The idea to form Skye Air Mobility happened sometime in 2018 when Kumar, CTO Swapnik Jakkampudi, and directors Chandra Prakash and Shrikant Sharda met at an event organised by the World Economic Forum.
This was at a time when drone policies were very restrictive, and there was a near-blanket ban on its usage. “The plan then was never to get into manufacturing or creating our own drones,” Kumar said.

“However, fate led us into manufacturing because the regulations and other things were pretty delayed,” he added. Since then the startup has been manufacturing drones capable of carrying payloads from 500 grams to 50 kg.

However, now with the ecosystem opening up, the startup has been taking on a lot of e-commerce delivery projects with companies such as Dunzo and Flipkart, among others.

Recently it delivered frozen food for Curefoods in Gurugram. The startup is also part of the Swiggy drone delivery pilot (which is yet to take off) and it has also delivered essential medicines using drones.

“So far we have done 1,500 flights carrying a payload of around 4,500 kilos. The distance that we have covered aerially is around 6,000 km, which will translate to 12-13,000 km by road,” he said.

In the future, Kumar wants to take up cost-effective drone deliveries in the country and be known for that.

“We have studied 11 nations which have taken up drone deliveries—studied their mistakes and challenges they have faced, what they have gone ‘up’ with, and so on,” Kumar said.

What Kumar has realised is that many countries tried drone deliveries but had to abandon their plans because it was not cost effective.

Skye Air Mobility is not the only to take up drone delivery projects in the country. Lucknow-based Tech Eagle, Chennai-based Garuda Aerospace and Hyderabad-based Marut Dronetech are among other startups that have been working in this area.

The software

For the change in tack to work, Skye Air Mobility has to first develop an in-house software, something no drone company in India has done, Kumar said.

They all use trusted third-party platforms. Drone delivery software platforms currently available in India include Noida, Uttar Pradesh-based Anra Technologies’ SmartSkies and FlytZip from Pune’s FlytBase, among others. These platforms address all aspects of remote delivery: managing orders, inventory, and provisioning products, and operating the drone itself.

But Kumar is thinking bigger. “Our platform will be completely different. It's got multiple engineers… and it's not being built for India but for the global market,” he said, adding that it will take another two years for it to be complete.

Skye recently raised $161,000 in a seed round at a valuation of $4.94 million, according to data from Tracxn. However, Kumar says that the round is still ongoing.

Disclaimer: MoneyControl is a part of the Network18 group. Network18 is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.