Commercial Usage of Drones: Overview in the Indian context

By Renbin Koshy Abraham

Introduction

There was a time when someone looked up at the night sky, saw a strange flying object with flashing lights, they would have thought that it was a UFO, something straight out of science fiction(especially if one had unconventional beliefs). Now, more often than not, the first thought that comes to one’s mind is that it is a drone.

Drones have become ubiquitous, having multiple applications in diverse fields such as commerce, military, medicine and agriculture. This article attempts to look at drone utilization, specifically in the non-military applications, and the challenges faced by the manufacturers and customers in India.

Drones can be an aircraft (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), boat (Unmanned Surface Vehicle), ground vehicle (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) or even a submersible (Unmanned underwater vehicle) that operates without any human crew on board. It can be entirely piloted by a human being or capable of some degree of navigation on its own if necessary[1][2][3][4][5]. The most popular in public minds are the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs, which is also the primary focus of this article.

Applications

UAVs have been used for military applications as far back as 1849, when an Austrian balloon carrier attempted to launch 200 or so incendiary balloons when sieging Vienna [6]. However, civilian usage of drones is relatively recent. Its applications however have enormous potential. Below are few of the commercial applications involving drones:[7]

Last mile delivery in logistics
Aerial photography and videography
Mapping & Surveying
Medicine [8]
Precision Agriculture (using images from drones to create topographic maps and optimize the usage of water, fertilizers etc.) [9]
Humanitarian Aid delivery [10]
Entertainment (Aerial drone shows)
Deep Sea explorations
Oceanography
Infrastructure (Real time project progress tracking, creation of digital twins)

The following is a statistic from 2021 that shows the drone usage in the transport industry, which shows that mapping & surveying have the biggest share [7].

*Figure1: Drone usage in the transport industry*

In India, infrastructure and agriculture seem to be sectors where drone utilization is the highest [11]

*Figure 2: Drone utilization in India across sectors*

Another interesting use is with respect to medical supply delivery from Rwanda. Zipline, an American company, has signed an agreement with the government of Rwanda, to deliver medical supplies to remote regions. This includes blood, platelets, plasma and vaccines [12]. They have claimed that delivery timelines have been cut down from a few hours to 15 minutes. The drones are launched from a distribution center to various locations. They then drop the supplies by parachute and return to the center after making the delivery. The below video gives an overview of their operation:

How drones are delivering lifesaving medical supplies in Rwanda

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has done a similar project called ‘iDrone’, which assessed the feasibility of delivering medical supplies to remote regions in the North East of India [13]. A total of 17,275 units of medical supplies were delivered, covering a total of 735 kms of aerial distance in approximately 12 hours [7].

Indian Drone Landscape & Security

The multitude of commercial drone applications has made the Indian government come up with the Drone Liberalization policy. Introduced in 2021, its purpose is to facilitate drone operations and make India a global drone hub. A production linked incentive scheme (PLI) has also been launched for drone and drone component manufacturing [7]. An online platform called Digital Sky has been set up by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which will handle various activities related to the management of UAVs.

The DGCA classifies drones into the following categories[14]:

*Figure 3: Drone classification (Source: Digital Sky website)*

All individual drones must now have a Unique Identification Number (UIN). As of now 18909 UINs have been issued by the Digital sky platform[14]. In addition, every drone pilot, whether commercial or non-commercial, is expected to have a remote pilot certificate. The government recently eased the rules to make obtaining said certificate a bit easier. Any applicant between the ages of 18 to 65 are eligible and can obtain the license from any remote pilot training institute that has been recognized by the DGCA [15]. The DGCA has authorized over 70 pilot training institutes, who in turned have churned out over 8000 certified remote pilots [16]. The drone market size in India is expected to grow to ₹ 2.5 trillion ( $ 30 billion) by 2030, though a bulk of this will be in the defense sector [17].

At the same time, India has banned the import of drones. This includes completely built units (CBU), Completely Knocked Down Units (CKU) and Semi Knocked Down Units (SKU). Exceptions are only given to government entities and educational institutions for research and development purposes[18]. The government says that this decision is also a part of the effort to promote domestic manufacturing.

There is however the question of security.Globally, China is the market leader when it comes to commercial drone production. The Chinese firm DJI, is currently the global leader with around 70% of the market share [19]. Chinese firms have significant comparative advantages when it comes to the vertical integration of design, development, supply chain, manufacturing pipeline and logistics [20]. They have also leveraged on the early mover advantage and built up significant economies of scale. DJI, for example, was founded in 2006 [21].

The Chinese dominance in the global drone market has inevitably led to concerns about security vulnerabilities. India, for example, has banned the use of Chinese components in drones specifically used for defense purposes[22]. This has led to a rise in the cost of manufacturing as the vast majority of drone component supplies come from China. Alternative suppliers are relatively harder to find and more expensive, thus driving up the cost. Here again, China’s comparative advantage cannot be wished away, despite the Indian government funding in R&D as Indian firms need time to catch up and create a vertically integrated ecosystem [23].

This is not to say the security concerns regarding Chinese drones or hardware are unfounded. The United States, at both the federal and state levels, have enacted multiple legislations restricting the usage of Chinese drones [24].Security researchers have found vulnerabilities that have allowed them to access sensitive customer data on DJI servers. They have also misrepresented their connection to the Chinese government, especially in terms of investment[24]. Personal information was also sent to third party servers whose terms of service support sharing information with the Chinese government entities [25].

Concluding Remarks

It will take time and significant investment to make the Indian drone industry competitive on a global scale. In that regard, a leaf can be taken out of India’s software industry. It is the behemoth that it is today because it opened itself to competition. In doing so, it understood the gaps in demand globally and became an outsourcing hub, which then led to an improved knowledge base and technical economy of scale. It then utilized these to build up comparative advantages and develop homegrown IT products that are now used globally. A similar strategy of creating a regulatory framework, which will allow Indian companies to exchange knowledge and trade more freely with their counterparts, is the need of the hour. Safeguards can of course be built into the framework to ensure that hostile actors are kept out but home grown companies as well as consumers should not be restricted from the growing global drone market.

References

https://web.archive.org/web/20090724015052/http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj91/spr91/4spr91.htm

Renbin Koshy Abraham is currently a student of the GCPP (Technology and Policy) Programme. Read the original piece here.

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