Swiggy to commence drone trials for Instamart, selects four startups for pilot project

As many as four drone startups have been selected by Swiggy for a pilot project that involves carrying out supply runs for the food delivery platform’s grocery service Instamart.

Across two tranches, drone startups Bengaluru-based Garuda Aerospace Pvt Ltd, New Delhi-based Skyeair Mobility Pvt Ltd, ANRA+TechEagle Consortia, and Hyderabad-based Marut Dronetech Pvt Ltd will “replenish stocks between seller-run dark stores and from a store to a common customer point”.

“A deliver partner will then pick up orders from the common point and deliver them to a customer’s doorstep,” a blog post by Swiggy said on Friday evening. The pilot will take place in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR.

The work of Tranche 1, comprising Garuda Aerospace and Skyeair Mobility will start from May, and the second tranche, comprising ANRA+TechEagle Consortia and Marut Dronetech will commence after that, Swiggy added.

“Our intent is to use valuable learnings from the first tranche and design a tranche 2 experiment to specifically address any shortcomings that are identified,” the blog post said.

This development comes in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) that Swiggy had floated a few weeks back. The food-delivery platform said that it received 345 registrations in total, and chose the four startups after an evaluation process covering legal, financial, and technical rounds.