It is time to make drones accessible for farmers. There are over 200 startups, engaged in manufacturing and providing drone services in agriculture, who would play a pivotal role. Empanelling with the state governments and becoming custom hiring centres themselves; are the critical next steps for startups, Shomita Biswas, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India, said while addressing a webinar on Wednesday.
The official was speaking at the industry roundtable ‘AgLab – Connecting Innovators with Corporates – Drone Applications in Agriculture & Crop Protection, organised by ThinkAg in association with CropLife India. The webinar was aimed at bringing together all stakeholders of the agricultural drone ecosystem with a ‘focused platform for partnerships’ for the startups and stressed on the need of fast-tracking and large-scale adoption of drone technology for agrochemical spraying in the country.
“The Government of India has added another intervention involving the rural youth. Just with a Bachelor in Science – Agriculture degree, he/she can open a custom hiring centre, own a drone, and be an entrepreneur; employing others. Youth will be the ambassadors of drone technology and hence we must leverage this segment. Startups in this sector can engage with the youth and other partners at the village level and help the growth of the agricultural economy,” Biswas added.
Speaking at the occasion, Asitava Sen, Chief Executive Officer, CropLife India said, “CropLife India is committed to help develop a conducive ecosystem and quick adoption of Kisan Drones in India. Collaborations between innovators and agrochemical companies would play an imminent role in flattening the learning curve.”
“The purpose of the webinar is to offer a ‘Focused and Neutral Platform for partnerships’ between the startups and agrochemical and agriculture input companies for knowledge sharing. Partnerships amongst stakeholders are critical to overcome the challenges and leverage the opportunities that this new technology offers,” Sen added.
Speaking on the utilisation of ‘Kisan Drones, Hemendra Mathur, Co-Founder, ThinkAg in his introductory remarks said, “Drone applications including spraying, crop health monitoring and data collection will be transformative for Indian agriculture”. He mentioned that there was merit in building an ‘open-source platform’ of the images captured through drone cameras. The image analytics can help build specific APIs as well as public dashboards on crop health, sowing area and potential yields. This will need collaboration amongst drone players and a mechanism to store, share and analyse images on a common platform.
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Highlighting the need for the application of drones in agriculture, Prem Kumar Vislawath, Founder & Chief Innovator, Marut Drones said, “The technological aspect of drones hasn’t been picked up in agriculture. Farmers still rely on manual farming but drones are set to change the perspective, as drones with AI technology quantify distinctive features like plant count and plant height. From sowing to harvest, we help farmers with data by developing a crop-wise calendar.”
Briefing on their drones services for agricultural practices, Amandeep Panwar, Executive Director & CEO, BharatRohan Airborne Innovations said, “We provide farmers with end-to-end solutions- from the sowing of seeds to the sale of their produce and we offer a complete dashboard to each and every stakeholder. Our major USP is that we work on hyper-spectral imaging for crop monitoring where we identify a crop issue even before visual symptoms appear.”
Speaking on adherence to SOPs and the need for skill development in the usage of drones in agriculture, Pradeep Palelli, Co-Founder & CEO of Thanos Technologies said, “All agrochemical companies are required to adhere to SOPs and we have been working with a few of them on a pilot basis apart from working with Flytech Aviation Academy. We have partnered with National Skill Training Institute (NSTI), Hyderabad, to help in creating a talent pool.”
Highlighting the innovative interventions, Raja Raman, Chief Business Officer & Board Member, Dhaksha Unmanned Systems said, “We devised petrol engine-based drones instead of battery-pack drones to reduce the operational cost of Rs. 10 lakh to Rs. 2.5-2.8 lakh. They cover 30-35 acres a day with 8-hour usage per day and roughly 650 ml petrol usage each day. We offer a complete solution, training technicians, dealers-distributors across India”.
Speaking on skill training for drone operations, Prayas Saxena, Founder & CEO, Skylane Dronetech said, “We are working with farmers, service partners and agri-input companies. We have developed training modules and have started imparting training in agricultural institutes. We feel that collaboration would provide more network to companies and access to remote places apart from ensuring precision and adding value.”
Underling the transformation Kisan Drones are bringing into the agriculture sector, Saurabh Srivastava, General Manager – Sales, IoTechWorld Avigation said, “We started in the year 2017 with just four drones but right now we are focused on agricultural drones with our manufacturing facility in Gurgaon. Our ‘Agribot’, a portable bot which can be transported via a two-wheeler and has a flight time of 20 min; one spray cycle of 7 minutes approx. in an hour; covering 4 to 5 acres with optimum coverage of 30 acres per day; with a minimum of 6 battery sets.”
A huge opportunity, as well as challenges, lie ahead for the startups to scale up the adoption of drone applications in agriculture by way of collaboration with the agri input companies.
