Food can be delivered to your place in a few minutes after you order your meal from a restaurant. The late and hectic waiting period could be reduced soon as the food delivery partners Swiggy and ANRA Technologies got a nod from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Directorate General of Aviation (DGCA), and Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) to begin drone trials for delivering food.
Shilpa Ghaneshwar, Swiggy’s principal program manager, said the purpose is to “put the long-range proficiencies of drone technology to best use.” She further said it would enhance the last-mile journey because “it only becomes natural for us to explore the latest avenues available to maximise the benefit to our consumers.” Swiggy’s partner for this project, ANRA, also received its approval for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), which will exercise drone trials for food and medical packages in Uttar Pradesh’s Etah and Punjab’s Rupnagar districts. It started its initial sortie on June 16, following planning related to air traffic control integration and well-equipped products.
It has associated with the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, for a similar project emphasising medical deliveries. “Our technology may soon help deliver food and medical packages to underserved populations,” said Amit Ganjoo, founder and CEO of ANRA, determined to make this service available soon in the country.
The airspace management firm and its associates plan to leverage collected data and vital developments from the flights to endorse the making of India’s nationwide operational UAS Traffic Management (UTM) platform known as Digital Sky. The results will allow government and regulatory stakeholders and industries to assess the requirement to back interaction and data exchange between UTM services suppliers while determining the suitability and applicability of the current technology features.
It is not the first instance of a delivery platform trying its hands-on drone delivery. In June, Google-backed Dunzo said it would pilot drone delivery of medical packages under the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project in Telangana. It added that drone delivery would offer swift access to vaccines and medicine to people residing in rural areas. The Telangana government collaborated with NITI Aayog and the World Economic Forum for this project.
Moreover, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has just given formal approval to Zomato, too. It declared its successful test delivery of drones in India in June 2019. The drone became functional at a distance of 5 kilometres, covering nearly 10 minutes, with a pace of 80 kmph, and weighing 5 kgs. Zomato procured a drone startup named TechEagle in December 2018, enabling their experiments with drones.
As per the Zomato spokesperson, “We have been working on powering delivery via drones for some time now and welcome this move from DGCA to test our systems. We are excited to build the future of aerial food delivery in India.”
An aggregate of 13 companies have been given the nod, which comprises Spicejet and Asteria Aerospace, which Reliance endorses. If this becomes successful, one can expect other delivery platforms to come with such strategies to help citizens in a much better way.
