Gurugram-based drone start-up TechEagle on February 16 delivered 3 kg of tuberculosis medicines with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh to the district hospital in Tehri Garhwal in Uttarakhand.
The drone, Vertiplane X3, covered a distance of 36 km and reached an elevation of 2 km in 29 minutes to reach Baurari district hospital, a statement by the company said. The same distance by road in the hilly terrains of Uttarakhand takes around 2 hours, Google Maps estimated. The company claimed that it takes 2.5 -3 hours by road.
The drone returned from the district hospital in Baurari to AIIMS with diagnostic samples of TB from the patient's family members, TechEagle said.
This drone delivery was taken up as part of the the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, launched by the Indian government last year.
Speaking to Moneycontrol, CEO and founder of TechEagle, Vikram Singh Meena said that not just medicines related to tuberculosis but the start-up is looking towards delivering and picking up diagnostics for varied other use cases.
"Keeping Rishikesh as the centre, we are looking at different geographies at at a distance of 50-100 km, identifying different location and routes for deliveries," Singh said.
In 2018, the start-up initiated tea delivery using a drone in Lucknow, UP. In 2021, the company also took part in the 'Medicine from Sky' project in Telangana, where along with other start-ups it delivered vaccines using drones.
In 2022, TechEagle established a drone delivery network in Meghalaya, which is being used to deliver medicines, vaccines, first aid kits and so on.
Meena, an IIT Kanpur alumnus, founded the company in 2015 and in 2021 it raised seed funding of $500,000 led by India Accelerators.
Drone deliveries in the last two years have seen an uptick with many start-ups carrying out pilots for delivering food, medicines, e-commerce and so on.
In December 2022, Skye Air Mobility, a New Delhi-based drone startup launched drone flights to transport diagnostic test samples from Uttarkashi to Sahastradhara (Dehradun) in Uttarakhand.
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