IoTechWorld Avigation targets to sell more than 1000 Kisan Drones during 2022-23

Buoyed by the exponential growth potential of the Drone Industry, leading Kisan Drone (agricultural Drone) manufacturer IoTechWorld Avigation Private Limited has said it is targeting to sell more than 1,000 Kisan Drones during 2022-23 and aiming to capture the lion’s share in the Kisan Drone market, which is likely to be Rs 5000 crore by 2025-26.

Deepak Bhardwaj, Co-founder, IoTechWorld Avigation, said that his company was India's first type certified Drone manufacturer. They were in advanced talks with investors to raise funds, which will be utilized for expansion.

Last year, the company raised around Rs 30 crore from leading agrochemical company Dhanuka Agritech. The company has been selected for the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Drone and Drone components. IoTechWorld Avigation’s flagship drone ‘AGRIBOT’ is a multi-purpose Kisan drone supporting spraying, granule broadcasting and crop health monitoring.

Anoop Upadhyay, Co-founder, IoTechWorld Avigation, said that his company was working to indigenize all components within 1-2 years. The company has conducted many campaigns and Drone Yatra of 15,000 km across India for educating farmers on benefits of drone in agriculture. To increase employment, IoTechWorld Avigation is developing village-level entrepreneurs and service partners. Upadhyay said that the company had its own centres in 12 States, which was helping farmers. A new entrepreneur is able to avail finance (loans) benefits under the Agri Infra Fund.

The founders of the company said that IoTechWorld had launched the DRASS model mobile app, which was helping new entrepreneurs in getting business and small and marginal farmers in availing drawing services. They said that the company had launched Bike back Drone model and new Lithium-Ion batteries to reduce the cost of operating a drone and to increase its mobility.

Bharadwaj said that the company was opening RPTO (Remote Pilot Training Organisation) with different state governments. This will offer pilot license course at very low cost. He said that many KVKs, ICAR institutes and State Agri Universities had procured drones from them and now the company is enabling them so that they can give demonstration and educate the local farmers.

Officials from the company say that the company offers a multi-lingual (Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, etc.) user interface for ease of use by its farmer friends. They said that subsidies ranging from 40 to 100 per cent is being provided by the government for faster adoption of Kisan Drones. IoTechWorld Avigation is empanelled with various state Governments like Madhya Pradesh. The officials said that as per a recent report by FICCI–EY, the drone market was likely to become $30bn by 2030. The agriculture drone market is estimated to contribute around 30 per cent of the overall drone market.