“Manna is the only business I’ve started that keeps me awake at night, but it is also the most fun — its potential is phenomenal” (Bobby Healy, Manna Drone Delivery)

In the sec­ond of evtolinsights.com series of arti­cles look­ing at eVTOL and drone devel­op­ments in Ire­land, we inter­view Bob­by Healy, founder and CEO of drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny, Man­na. This is Healy’s fourth suc­cess­ful start­up. Formed in late 2018, the com­pa­ny is already mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant impact and is soon to expand into Europe and Amer­i­ca.

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Healy doesn’t like being called a ser­i­al entre­pre­neur. “I hate the bloody term,” he replies in his Irish brogue. “It is not about me, but the team. We have 110 staff at Man­na where most are smarter than I am. I’m just the guy who lights the fuse.”

Yet, Healy is spe­cial. He is a vision­ary who dreams big and has three pre­vi­ous suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es to prove he’s not a flash-in-the-pan. “I’ve been very lucky along the way with the oth­er star­tups I built,” Healy mod­est­ly says. “This lat­est one is so much more dif­fi­cult. My last busi­ness, Car­Trawler, I could have done blind­fold­ed. It was that easy. I just got lucky with the tim­ing.”

Now, he has tak­en on his most chal­leng­ing ven­ture to date. “A hard­ware busi­ness is always dif­fi­cult to build,” he explains. “But if you want to make it more dif­fi­cult, the hard­ware requires to fly. And if you want to make it almost impos­si­ble, that hard­ware then needs to be reg­u­lat­ed, where reg­u­la­tion implies an uncer­tain time­line and an uncer­tain time­line implies dif­fi­cul­ty in rais­ing cap­i­tal.”

Even so, Healy seems to thrive on impos­si­ble chal­lenges. Investors includ­ing Molten Ven­tures, ff Ven­ture Cap­i­tal, Elk­stone, Team Europe and Atlantic Bridge have helped laden Manna’s cof­fers with over EUR30 mil­lion. They are keen to hand over mon­ey to some­one who has seri­al­ly walked the red car­pet of suc­cess. And he is hap­py to return this com­pli­ment by thrust­ing ahead and putting into prac­tice inno­v­a­tive, coura­geous and some might even say, crazy pio­neer­ing ideas.

Fly­ing Over Bal­brig­gan

Take a look at Ire­land.

Manna’s first major break came two years ago when Tesco chose the com­pa­ny to tri­al drone deliv­ery in the town of Oran­more, Coun­ty Gal­way. No oth­er drone com­pa­ny, at that time, had attempt­ed such an inno­v­a­tive feat. A 10,000 pop­u­la­tion with over 700 poten­tial Tesco prod­ucts to deliv­er, the res­i­dents quick­ly embraced the 1.2 metre long air­craft, the size of a labrador dog, fly­ing over­head up to 200 ft above the ground, at a speed of 50 mph, and began order­ing every­thing from cof­fee and scones to eggs and broc­coli. The time tak­en from order to deliv­ery: less than three min­utes. This tri­al was an impor­tant learn­ing curve for Man­na, gain­ing valu­able insights along the way.

Healy was amazed by what res­i­dents pur­chased. “We had some­one order a head of broc­coli,” he says. “Who orders one head of broc­coli for drone deliv­ery? The broc­coli cost less than a euro and then they paid EUR5 for that deliv­ery.”

He con­tin­ues, “My favourite though was some­body at nine in the evening order­ing a tub of nap­py cream and a mel­on. You can see the cream might have been an emer­gency if they had run out, but then they decid­ed to add a mel­on to the order, you know, because they could.” Oth­er ven­dors showed inter­est in the project includ­ing a Thai food take­away out­let.

Sum­ma­ry of Oran­more

Three months on: How is the Man­na drone deliv­ery Tesco tri­al in Oran­more “actu­al­ly going?”

This tri­al was a suc­cess, so phase 2 began nine months ago. Doing exact­ly the same thing, but for a larg­er town. Wel­come Bal­brig­gan, Coun­ty Dublin: pop­u­la­tion 35,000: Locat­ed just 15 min­utes from Dublin Air­port: Over 30 dif­fer­ent ven­dors now par­tic­i­pat­ing. Healy com­ments, “The area is big­ger with more peo­ple, more craft, more vol­ume, more chal­leng­ing nav­i­ga­tion… we’ve stretched our legs and gone up a gear. Now it’s up to six drones in the air, at any one time, with six deliv­er­ies an hour per craft.”

While the com­pa­ny has sold around 4,500 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts dur­ing its two tri­als, the top 3 most pop­u­lar items at Bal­brig­gan comes with a sur­prise. Of course, a morn­ing cof­fee or gen­er­al brew is No.1 and gen­er­al gro­ceries is third along­side take­away foods, but who would have guessed that milk­shakes vie for top spot. “One of our ven­dors is Bó Bainne,” remarks Healy. “It is crazy how much vol­ume they attract. Head and shoul­ders above almost any­thing else we sell. The com­pa­ny gets con­stant orders all day, every day. Some cus­tomers have ordered over 50 times from us, just for this one prod­uct. They don’t view it as a drone deliv­ery. They call it ‘a Bó Bainne’.”

The price for each milk­shake ranges from five to six euros depend­ing if it is made with milk or ice-cream. Man­na charges EUR4.20 for deliv­ery, where one or ten deliv­ered is the same fee. The aver­age cost peo­ple are pay­ing each time is around 20 euros.

Goods Deliv­ered to Your Door

Healy con­tin­ues, “Sur­pris­ing­ly and against pub­lic opin­ion, few use our drones to buy phar­ma­cy prod­ucts. They rep­re­sent less than half a per­cent of our sales.”

He explains that one insight gained is peo­ple usu­al­ly trav­el to the fur­thest phar­ma­cy away from their home­town as they don’t want any­one to know about their per­son­al health prob­lems. Healy laughs, “I don’t know whether this is an Irish thing. The sim­ple truth is peo­ple are more inter­est­ed in buy­ing every­day prod­ucts.”

Now phase 3 is close by. An undis­closed sub­urb of Dublin with a pop­u­la­tion of 120,000. Tri­als will begin soon although Healy is tight-lipped about the region. He smiles, “I haven’t even told Ireland’s Min­is­ter for Enter­prise, Trade and Employ­ment, Tánaiste Leo Varad­kar, yet.”

Healy is also secre­tive about Europe. Plans include build­ing a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant and oper­at­ing in six coun­tries start­ing next year. “We are not quite ready to scale the ser­vice.”

The key is gain­ing the Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from reg­u­la­tor EASA. He con­tin­ues, “There is no point rolling out this busi­ness until you have BVLOS. The eco­nom­ics don’t work. It can work on high end med­i­cines and spe­cial­ist health­care prod­ucts, but not for every day items.”

Once cer­ti­fied, it’s all hands to the pump as Man­na rapid­ly expands from the mid­dle of 2023 with three or four Euro­pean coun­tries ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied and a fur­ther two lat­er on. Once more, Tánaiste Leo Varad­kar remains in the dark. Healy points out, “Any­one who under­stands the Euro­pean reg­u­la­tions can prob­a­bly guess a fair few of them.”

Tánaiste Leo Varad­kar Remains in the Dark

Man­na aims to copy what it will be doing in the lat­est iden­ti­fied Dublin sub­urb, but with­out the need for visu­al observers. Healy points out that the com­pa­ny can become prof­itable once BVLOS is imple­ment­ed.

Mean­while, Ire­land will not be snubbed. In fact, Man­na aims to con­tin­ue its Irish expan­sion with a fur­ther assault “on a large chunk of the coun­try.” And as the com­pa­ny’s ambi­tion is like a per­pet­u­al guz­zling beast, Amer­i­ca is also on its radar, although BVLOS may prove more dif­fi­cult to achieve ini­tial­ly.

This ambi­tion is exem­pli­fied by Healy say­ing, “Next year we plan to con­struct sub 500 air­craft, but towards the end of 2024 this num­ber could rise to 1,000 a day.” He then out­does this dai­ly pre­dic­tion. “At matu­ri­ty, Man­na will be fly­ing a mil­lion flights per day!”

Cue the new improved, big­ger and bet­ter, Man­na ZX drone ready for oper­a­tion with­in months.

Han­dling and range are two of its pri­ma­ry advances, espe­cial­ly when fly­ing in bad weath­er. “Irish con­di­tions, espe­cial­ly around coastal regions, can be tem­pera­men­tal at best,” explains Healy. “Present­ly, we don’t fly in rain and high winds hurt us, but the ZX has the capa­bil­i­ty of fly­ing in 98% of poor cli­mate. We won’t trav­el in icy con­di­tions or real­ly severe wind. Oth­er than that it is doable.”

The ZX with its high­er num­ber eight motors can trav­el fur­ther and car­ry more pay­load (up to 8 lb, 30,00 cubic cen­time­tre car­go). It has been designed specif­i­cal­ly for Europe. “We’ve put a lot more tech in to the new craft,” he says. “This includes some AI involved with the deliv­ery process.”

The cost to build each craft is between USD10,000 and USD15,000, a great deal cheap­er than a fly­ing taxi. Yet, if con­struct­ing 1,000 a day…

Healy remarks, “You’ve got to think from the bot­tom up. If you car­ry out 400 flights per day, do you make mon­ey on this? If the answer is yes, then it becomes viable. Yet, in the ear­ly stages there remains a cash­flow prob­lem. So you require a ton of cash.

“In the UK, for exam­ple, there are over 850 mil­lion take out meals sold a year. Just 10 per­cent of that is 85 mil­lion, where you would need 40,000 craft to sat­is­fy that mar­ket. That’s half a bil­lion dol­lars out­lay at least. Even though you are quick­ly prof­itable, there are the ini­tial drone con­struc­tion costs to pay for. You’re gonna need a huge amount of cap­i­tal to grow quick­ly.”

Euro­pean Flights in 2023

He con­tin­ues, “That’s why the pub­lic mar­kets real­ly suit this busi­ness. While we’re fund­ed until mid 2024, the BVLOS cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is the trig­ger point for a Series B round. This should attract a large finan­cial num­ber. Then it’s throt­tle up from there­on for addi­tion­al monies which could either be an IPO or a Series C round.”

Healy is more attract­ed to the for­mer. “Peo­ple can relate to drone deliv­ery. They are an inte­gral part of its suc­cess and why an IPO democ­ra­tis­es the process, allow­ing the pub­lic to buy our shares and become part of the company’s suc­cess.”

Yet, it’s not all pos­i­tive.

In July, Man­na suf­fered its first ever drone mishap while fly­ing over Bal­brig­gan. Social media jumped on this with glee, call­ing it “a crash.” Yet, the com­pa­ny is quick to point out that, in fact, it was an ‘Inten­tion­al Flight Ter­mi­na­tion’. No-one was hurt and while the fake news also claimed the para­chute didn’t work, Healy retorts, “It did work. It worked per­fect­ly and as it should do. Social media can dri­ve me nuts!”

He explains, “All the safe­ty mea­sures worked. A retain­ing bolt on the craft had over­tight­ened after 400+ flights; a crack devel­oped, under a micro­scope you can see exact­ly what hap­pened; and the soft­ware con­clud­ed it was safer to ter­mi­nate the flight.”

Healy con­tin­ues, “We gave a full report to the IAA with­in a cou­ple of days. We knew very quick­ly what had gone wrong. It was a fail­ure of process rather than design.”

He views the mishap as part of a vital learn­ing curve. “In this game, where safe­ty is para­mount, progress is a series of steps to improve things over time.” Then there are the res­i­dents’ com­plaints. Just 25 after 125,000 flights, where 99 per­cent have come from those liv­ing clos­est to the drone hub.

For exam­ple, at Bal­brig­gan, Man­na uses the local Tesco roof. With­in 300 metres there are hous­ing estates. Healy explains, “The head­line is: Vol­ume and fre­quen­cy of flights deter­mine the com­plaints. Now, we imme­di­ate­ly hop up much high­er from the roof, so any slight noise or vis­i­ble sight­ing is dimin­ished. We also descend to the hub from a greater height than before. That has mit­i­gat­ed the prob­lem.”

He adds, “While we have proven it is not an issue that may threat­en the roll­out of the indus­try, those liv­ing clos­est to the drone hub require being the most tol­er­ant.”

Drone Hub at Bal­brig­gan

I wind the inter­view down which allows Healy to enthuse about his lat­est busi­ness. “Man­na is the most fun I’ve had. I start­ed my career writ­ing video games and I thought that was excit­ing. Man­na could change the world over how peo­ple get goods deliv­ered. Poten­tial­ly, drone deliv­ery might become a mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar busi­ness in the next 10 or so years. The trans­for­ma­tion that we could achieve, if we can realise the industry’s full poten­tial, is absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal. That’s a prize worth going for.

“While I love it, it’s the only busi­ness I’ve run that keeps me awake at night. For every day we are fly­ing over Bal­brig­gan it’s on me if we get it wrong. That’s a heavy weight to bear. This is not your typ­i­cal start­up. You can’t go hell for leather and siz­zle. It is all about being safe, first and fore­most.”

As to his future?

“I start­ed Man­na when I was 49 years-old. I asked myself then, do I have the ener­gy to build anoth­er com­pa­ny from scratch and over a decade peri­od.”

I point out 60 years-old is the new 40.

Healy laughs, “I agree. Just throw more mois­turis­er on and keep the hair trendy.” He affirms, “Yep, I def­i­nite­ly have the ener­gy to see this through. In 10 years, I will either exit the busi­ness or step aside.” He jokes, “The prob­lem being I’ll prob­a­bly die from exhaus­tion first, as I love it so much.”

Can Healy ever see him­self retir­ing?

“Of course not! While oth­ers will be golf­ing, I’ll be cod­ing. As a hob­by­ist, I am cre­at­ing a new android app at the moment. The great thing about tech and soft­ware is, you can keep doing it until you drop dead.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.manna.aero

https://mobile.twitter.com/mannaaero (Lots of Recent Videos to View)

(Pics: Man­na)