Drones offer tremendous benefits to almost all sectors of the economy.  These include– agriculture, mining, infrastructure, surveillance, emergency response, transportation, geo-spatial mapping, defence, and law enforcement to name a few. 

Drones Industry are significant creators of employment and economic growth due to their reach, versatility, and ease of use, especially in India’s remote and inaccessible areas.

In past few years many startup companies have emerged in these sector and showing tremendous growth and contributing a huge amount to the Indian Drone Industry growth.

The drones and drone components manufacturing industry may see an investment of over INR 5,000 crore over the next three years.  The annual sales turnover of the drone manufacturing industry may grow from INR 60 crore in 2020-21 fold to over INR 900 crore in FY 2023-24.  The drone manufacturing industry is expected to generate over 10,000 direct jobs over the next three years.

The drone services industry (operations, logistics, data processing, traffic management etc.) is far bigger in scale and It is expected to grow to over INR 30,000 crore in next three years. The drone services industry is expected to generate over five lakh jobs in three years.

Considering the tremenndous growth potential along with employment scalability in this sector, GOI has announced PLI scheme for the companies related to this sectors. The list of listed and unlisted companies related to this sector are as follows:

Shortlisted Drone makers:

• EndureAir Systems, Noida, Uttar Pradesh
• Garuda Aerospace, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• Dhaksha Unmanned Systems, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• Ideaforge Technology, Mumbai, Maharashtra
• IoTechWorld Aviation, Gurugram, Haryana
• Omnipresent Robot Technologies, Gurugram, Haryana
• Raphe Mphibir, Noida, Uttar Pradesh
• Aarav Unmanned Systems, Bengaluru, Karnataka
• Asteria Aerospace, Bengaluru, Karnataka
• Roter Precision Instruments, Roorkee, Uttarakhand
• Sagar Defence Engineering, Pune, Maharashtra
• Throttle Aerospace Systems, Bengaluru, Karnataka

Shortlisted Drone component makers:

• Absolute Composites, Bangalore, Karnataka
• Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India – Parent Company Listed
• Adroitec Information Systems, New Delhi
• Alpha Design Technologies, Bangalore, Karnataka
• Inventgrid India, Sambalpur, Odisha
• Paras Aerospace, Bangalore, Karnataka – Listed
• SASMOS HET-Technologies, Bangalore, Karnataka
• Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
• Dynamake Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana
• Imaginarium Rapid, Mumbai, Maharashtra
• SASMOS HET Technologies, Bengaluru, Karnataka
• Servocontrols Aerospace India, Belagavi, Karnataka
• Valdel Advanced Technologies, Bengaluru, Karnataka
• ZMotion Autonomous Systems, Bengaluru, Karnataka

To streamline the Drone industry, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has released many different guidelines and notices such as drone airspace map for India and sector-specific PLI scheme in September 2021 and the National Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) Policy Framework in October 2021and Drone certification scheme in January 2022. The single window DigitalSky Platform was also launched in January 2022.

There are many criteria which are needed to be fulfilled by all the companies in order to be the part of PLI scheme. Illustrative calculation issued by MoCA is as follow: 

Estimated payout schedule of PLI for drone and drone components published by GOI are as follows:

Given its traditional strengths in innovation, information technology, frugal engineering and its huge domestic demand, India has the potential of becoming a global drone hub by 2030.

Drone makers in India currently have a turnover of about INR 800 million (US$10.88 million). The Civil Aviation Ministry has projected India’s drone industries’ total turnover worth INR 120 billion to 150 billion (US$1.63 billion to US$2.04 billion) by 2026 assisted by the PLI Scheme, with a budget allocation of INR 1.2 billion (US$16.32 million) spread over three years.

Thus, it can be said that GOI has taken very important and aggressive step towards Atmanirbhar Bharat and making India a self-reliant company by reducing its dependency on other countries and inviting Global countries to India which will help in strengthening the economy.

- HET ZAVERI

info@smartinvestment.in

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