Drone Company Floats on Stock Exchange, Sees Share Price Soar on Opening Day

While the gen­er­al pub­lic are able to invest in the growth of the eVTOL indus­try, via com­pa­nies like Joby Avi­a­tion, Archer, Lil­i­um, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Ver­ti­cal Aero­space who have float­ed on the Stock Mar­ket in recent years, there are few exam­ples with­in the drone indus­try. Some ana­lysts sug­gest this par­tic­u­lar mar­ket could become far larg­er and more wide­spread, espe­cial­ly in the short term. There­fore, when such a com­pa­ny does pub­licly float, the investors’ appetite for the stock can be over­whelm­ing.

This occurred last Fri­day (July 7th) when India-based drone com­pa­ny, IdeaF­orge Tech­nol­o­gy, float­ed on both the Bom­bay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the Nation­al Stock Exchange of India (NSE). The share price surged 92 per­cent on its Stock Mar­ket debut. Mean­while, the company’s shares ini­tial­ly list­ed at Rs 1,305.10 per share on the BSE, a pre­mi­um of 94.21 per­cent over their IPO issue price of Rs 672. On the NSE, the shares opened at Rs 1,300, up 93.45 per­cent from their IPO price.

In fact, the company’s IPO was over­sub­scribed by 123 times, show­ing the strong demand for its shares. The IPO raised Rs 567 crore (close to USD69 mil­lion), which will be used to fund the company’s growth plans.

(From left) Co-founders Rahul Singh, Ankit Mehta and Vip­ul Joshi  (Cred­it: ideaF­orge)

IdeaF­orge Technology’s strong debut on the stock mar­ket is not only a pos­i­tive sign for the Indi­an drone indus­try, but for the rest of the world. The company’s suc­cess may like­ly encour­age oth­er drone man­u­fac­tur­ers to list their shares on the glob­al stock exchanges. This will help to raise cap­i­tal for the indus­try and accel­er­ate its growth. At present, there are only a small hand­ful of drone-relat­ed stocks on India’s Stock Mar­ket. These include Info Edge, Zen Tech­nolo­gies and Droneacharya Aer­i­al Inno­va­tions.

IdeaF­orge is one of the lead­ing play­ers in the Indi­an drone indus­try with a mar­ket share of around 50 per­cent in fis­cal 2022, where its craft are increas­ing­ly being used for a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions includ­ing sur­veil­lance, map­ping and deliv­ery. Its prod­ucts are used by gov­ern­ment agen­cies, secu­ri­ty forces and gen­er­al busi­ness.

The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2007 by Ashish Bha­tia and Ankit Mehta and was one of the first to devel­op an VTOL drone. Its civ­il clients include the armed forces, the police, dis­as­ter man­age­ment forces and for­est depart­ments.

IdeaF­orge was one of the first in India to enter the UAV mar­ket and ranks 7th glob­al­ly in the dual-use cat­e­go­ry (both civ­il and defence as per the report pub­lished by Drone Indus­try Insights in Dec 2022). The com­pa­ny claims on its web­site, “Every 5 min­utes an IdeaF­orge Flight Takes-Off”.

The com­pa­ny has also devel­oped a num­ber of patent­ed tech­nolo­gies includ­ing its own flight con­trol sys­tem and ground con­trol sta­tion. The com­pa­ny is head­quar­tered in Pune, India, and has offices in Del­hi, Mum­bai, and Ban­ga­lore. Its prod­ucts are sold in India and around the world.

These include:-

: The XR-100, a tac­ti­cal drone that is used for sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance.

: The Switch, a com­mer­cial drone that is used for map­ping and deliv­ery.

: The Garu­da, a large-pay­load drone that is used for dis­as­ter relief and oth­er appli­ca­tions.

Mean­while, the Indi­an drone indus­try is grow­ing rapid­ly. The mar­ket is expect­ed to grow at a CAGR of 22 per­cent from 2022 to 2027, cov­er­ing deliv­ery, sur­veil­lance, map­ping and agri­cul­ture.

The Indi­an gov­ern­ment is strong­ly sup­port­ing the growth of this indus­try, launch­ing a num­ber of ini­tia­tives to pro­mote the use of drones, includ­ing the Drone Rules 2021 which great­ly helps both busi­ness­es and indi­vid­ual use.

Although, IdeaF­orge Tech­nol­o­gy faces stiff com­pe­ti­tion from a num­ber of oth­er com­pa­nies in the Indi­an drone mar­ket. These com­pa­nies include DroneDe­ploy, Sky­dio, Autel Robot­ics, Zero Zero Robot­ics and Hexa­drone. For exam­ple, Sky­dio is a Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures and sells drones. These are well-suit­ed for a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions, while offer­ing a high lev­el of safe­ty and have a rep­u­ta­tion for advanced nav­i­ga­tion and obsta­cle avoid­ance fea­tures.

Anoth­er is Indi­an-based Hexa­drone. Its drones are known for their high pay­load capac­i­ty and long flight times while offer­ing a good com­bi­na­tion of fea­tures and per­for­mance for com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions.

Some­body who has a strong belief in the future of the Indi­an drone sec­tor is Nicholas Brath­waite of Celes­ta Cap­i­tal. The com­pa­ny first invest­ed in IdeaF­orge six years ago. Speak­ing to CNBC-TV18, he recent­ly remarked, “We had looked at sev­er­al drone com­pa­nies in North Amer­i­ca and oth­er coun­tries, but we felt India was a bet­ter choice as the oppor­tu­ni­ties here are dif­fer­ent from else­where.”

Giv­en India’s many remote areas where road links can be few and far between, drones are an ide­al form of trans­porta­tion to rapid­ly deliv­er med­i­cines and gen­er­al health prod­ucts, as well as food and oth­er essen­tials.

IdeaF­orge Drone, Ankit Mehta Look­ing on (Pho­to: Rachit Goswa­mi)

Dur­ing a recent inter­view by the how2shout.com web­site with Rahul Singh, Vice-Pres­i­dent of IdeaF­orge, to the ques­tion, ‘What are your thoughts on aer­i­al robot­ics’ future in this coun­try? Say in the com­ing decade, what kind of growth & adop­tion do you see?’ He replied, “It is rea­son­able to antic­i­pate sub­stan­tial growth and adop­tion. Deliv­ery drones have already demon­strat­ed their poten­tial for effi­cient last-mile deliv­er­ies. As reg­u­la­tions evolve, we may see fur­ther inte­gra­tion of drones into sup­ply chains and trans­porta­tion net­works.”

Singh con­tin­ued, “Drones are becom­ing the must-have tech­nol­o­gy in Agri­cul­ture and Envi­ron­men­tal Mon­i­tor­ing, Pub­lic Safe­ty and Emer­gency Response, Defence, and many more sec­tors. In the com­ing decade, we will see its insep­a­ra­ble use and advanced appli­ca­tions.”

He added, “How­ev­er, the growth and adop­tion of aer­i­al robot­ics will depend on sev­er­al fac­tors, includ­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, pub­lic accep­tance, tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments and address­ing safe­ty and pri­va­cy con­cerns. Strik­ing the right bal­ance between inno­va­tion and reg­u­la­tion will be cru­cial to ensure the safe and respon­si­ble use of aer­i­al robot­ics.”

Singh con­clud­ed, “Over­all, the poten­tial for growth and adop­tion of aer­i­al robot­ics in the com­ing decade is very promis­ing. Con­tin­ued advance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, sup­port­ive reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ments, and expand­ing use cas­es are like­ly to dri­ve increased util­i­sa­tion of aer­i­al robot­ics across a wide range of indus­tries and sec­tors.”

If the drone indus­try is going to become as “glob­al­ly mas­sive” as some ana­lysts sug­gest, more com­pa­nies could float on the stock mar­ket offer­ing the pub­lic an oppor­tu­ni­ty to invest in this pro­ject­ed growth. At present, lead­ing drone deliv­ery firms like Zipline and Wing use pri­vate invest­ment to expand, although it is pos­si­ble that Irish-based Man­na Aero may be seek­ing pub­lic invest­ment in the near future. Giv­en the recent stock mar­ket suc­cess of IdeaF­orge, hope­ful­ly, more drone com­pa­nies will fol­low suit.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://ideaforgetech.com

(News Source: indianceo.in)

(Top image: The IdeaF­orge Switch Drone)