India Spearheading Global Green Aviation Revolution

India is ranked third in the world behind Chi­na and the U.S for CO2 emis­sions (2,411.73 mil­lion tons in 2020)*, so it is encour­ag­ing the coun­try shows deter­mi­na­tion to be a leader in the car­bon-free avi­a­tion indus­try of the future.

Emerg­ing Indi­an star­tups cov­er all bases from eVTOLs and actu­al fly­ing cars to deliv­ery drones and this fea­ture offers a brief snap­shot of the country’s lat­est devel­op­ments.

To begin with the quirky, India has its own fly­ing car com­pa­ny called Vina­ta Aero­mo­bil­i­ty. Based at Chen­nai in Tamil­nadu, it was found­ed by Yogesh Ramanathan last year. The com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a ful­ly autonomous hybrid vehi­cle (biofuel/electric) that can trav­el both on roads and fly in the sky.

The com­pa­ny web­site states, “The design com­bines ver­ti­cal take off and land­ing (VTOL), elec­tric and low/no emis­sion fuel hybrid pow­er tech­nolo­gies with cut­ting edge auto­mo­tive engi­neer­ing to cre­ate a one-of-a-kind vehi­cle that will rev­o­lu­tionise the third dimen­sion of trans­porta­tion, urban air mobil­i­ty.”

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Along­side the ethos, ‘Know your pas­sion. Fol­low it. Dream it. Love it’, Ramanathan set-up Vina­ta to make com­mut­ing, “More safe, fast and sus­tain­able, thus reduc­ing trav­el­ling hours in to min­utes.”

Called the Vina­ta Aero­mo­bile, ini­tial designs look a lit­tle like the 1960s Jet­sons car­toon craft. Prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tions include: Co-axi­al quad-rotor; seats 2 peo­ple; 18 ft long; 8 fixed pitch pro­pellers; max take-off weight 2,866 lbs; flight time on one charge 60 min­utes; flight length 62 miles; max speed 75 mph; and height ceil­ing 3,000 ft.

A mod­el con­cept was first unveiled at the Excel Helitech Expo Exhi­bi­tion, Lon­don in Octo­ber 2021. So, giv­en the com­pa­ny is bare­ly a year old, how it will fair is uncer­tain. Present­ly, Vina­ta is seek­ing the all-impor­tant invest­ment.

Mod­el of the Vina­ta Aero­mo­bile (cred­it: Vina­ta)

On to the fly­ing car’s big­ger broth­er, the eVTOL air taxi and in Sep­tem­ber, Eve Air Mobil­i­ty and Blade India (heli­copter trans­port com­pa­ny now expand­ing to eVTOLs) announced a major part­ner­ship to improve the future of air mobil­i­ty across the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent over the next five years.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion includes Guru­gram-based Blade plac­ing an order for 200 of Eve’s air­craft (each cost­ing USD 3 mil­lion) and a com­mit­ment to fly­ing 1,000 hours each year. The plan is to begin oper­a­tions in 2026, soon after the air­craft are deliv­ered. Data sug­gests the city of Ben­galu­ru alone, has the poten­tial to absorb 300 eVTOLs for com­mut­ing between the city cen­tre, the air­port and near­by loca­tions. Eve intends to intro­duce six-seater air taxis that will fly autonomous­ly lat­er on.

Amit Dut­ta, MD of Blade India, stat­ed the next three years will be spent devel­op­ing the ecosys­tem for the launch of air taxis by build­ing the nec­es­sary ver­ti­ports and air nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems for safe fly­ing. He com­ment­ed, “India’s traf­fic con­ges­tion dif­fi­cul­ties are only expect­ed to get worse. This col­lab­o­ra­tion allows ben­e­fit­ing from Eve’s exten­sive knowl­edge of not only EVA design but also the infra­struc­ture required to sup­port Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM).”

Graph­ic Image: Blade Fly­ing an Eve eVTOL (cred­it: Eve Air Mobil­i­ty)

The part­ners are present­ly engaged in a three-month pilot project where intra-city heli­copters, rep­re­sent­ing eVTOLs, are being flown across an undis­closed major Indi­an city, to under­stand the chal­lenges fly­ing taxis may face.

Dur­ing this project, Blade is col­lect­ing valu­able data on oper­a­tions and cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. This infor­ma­tion is being used to fur­ther enhance Eve’s eVTOL air­craft, air traf­fic man­age­ment (ATM) sys­tem, ser­vice and sup­port solu­tions. The Embraer off-shoot pre­vi­ous­ly announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sky­way Tech­nolo­gies to incor­po­rate their ATM soft­ware solu­tion for UAM.

Yet, it is the drone deliv­ery indus­try where India is most advanced.

Last month a major and sig­nif­i­cant announce­ment was announced con­cern­ing a part­ner­ship between Garu­da Aero­space, Jedsy drone deliv­ery and KL Tech City. The signed Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) calls for “coop­er­a­tion in knowl­edge and tech­nol­o­gy as well as mar­ket expan­sion and joint ven­tures.”

Garu­da is a leader in the indus­try hav­ing designed drones for 38 diverse appli­ca­tions that include sani­ti­sa­tion, agri­cul­ture spray­ing, map­ping, sur­veil­lance and deliv­ery. The com­pa­ny has 400 Gov­ern­ment clients and 100 major clients all around India, while Garu­da boasts over 200 employ­ees along­side a group of advi­so­ry board mem­bers and top drone oper­a­tors. The com­pa­ny has a pres­ence in close to 30 cities and plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the Indi­an gov­ern­men­t’s nation­al tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment.

After suc­cess­ful drone tri­als deliv­er­ing med­i­cines, mail, pack­ages and gen­er­al prod­ucts includ­ing to remote and iso­lat­ed areas, a green-light has been giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a net­work of deliv­ery routes around India.
And this is where Jedsy comes in. A Swiss start-up that man­u­fac­tures and oper­ates deliv­ery drones, the com­pa­ny also incor­po­rates a unique dock­ing fea­ture that enables the craft to deliv­er to bal­conies and even win­dows. This dock­ing sta­tion also auto­mat­i­cal­ly charges the Jedsy Glid­er, which enables it to fly all-day, every­day, with­out the need to return to a major charg­ing hub. (watch video)

The ini­tial aim is to begin with 100 long-range Jedsy drones to be in ser­vice by the end of 2023, “as the demand is enor­mous”, says Agnish­war Jayaprakash, CEO of Garu­da Aero­space.

Her­bert Weirather, CEO of Jedsy, com­ment­ed, “Logis­tics is the back­bone of every econ­o­my, and we can make a sig­nif­i­cant impact on India which, accord­ing to the IMF, has one of the slow­est roads in the world.”

He con­tin­ued, “The fixed-wing Jedsy craft can trav­el fifty times more effi­cient­ly than any auto­mo­bile, in a straight line, with­out traf­fic, and at a cruis­ing speed of 100 km/h, while remain­ing silent.” Adding, “It is only a mat­ter of time before light­weight deliv­er­ies are made on a large scale, as this is the log­i­cal pro­gres­sion of rapid logis­tics.”

The third part­ner, Malaysia-based KL Tech City, is an invest­ment and busi­ness ser­vices com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in new tech­nolo­gies. It focus­es on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, blockchain, clean tech, fin­tech and “big tech­nol­o­gy trends of the present and future.”

“Drones for good” is now a com­mon phrase. It high­lights the human­i­tar­i­an nature of deliv­ery drones and two weeks ago, an ini­tia­tive under the title ‘Med­i­cines From The Sky’, led by the Indi­an gov­ern­ment and World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF), took place.

Red­wing Aero­space, a Ben­galu­ru-based com­pa­ny that flies and man­u­fac­tures drones, first con­duct­ed a tri­al in August to deliv­er life-sav­ing drugs to Sep­pa, a small town in the East Kameng dis­trict of Arunachal Pradesh State.

Red­wing Drone (cred­it: Red­wing)

Fund­ed by the U.S Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID), it was a con­tin­u­a­tion of drone deliv­ery tests that com­menced in Telan­gana last year. Chief Min­is­ter Pema Khan­du had signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with WEF to explore and assess the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using drones to deliv­er health­care in the remote regions and inac­ces­si­ble ter­rain of the north­east­ern state.

The deliv­ery a fort­night ago was the first suc­cess­ful attempt at deliv­er­ing med­i­cines in the East Kameng region from Sep­pa to a remote area of Bana locat­ed in the Richukro­ng cir­cle. Advo­cates say this ser­vice “will dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the time and tur­moil in moments of med­ical neces­si­ty in the remote regions of the state.”

This area is inac­ces­si­ble by road due to hilly ter­rain and dif­fi­cult to reach even by foot. Res­i­dents of the region often have to strug­gle to get pri­ma­ry health­care and med­ical assis­tance. The sit­u­a­tion wors­ens dur­ing the mon­soon sea­son.

Drone deliv­ery is a life-saver for some as the craft can nav­i­gate the inhos­pitable areas aeri­al­ly while guar­an­tee­ing non-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and safe­ty of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals car­ried. The craft can also con­nect health­care cen­tres to these dis­tricts, ensur­ing time­ly assis­tance is pro­vid­ed to those in need.

And while such drones can save people’s lives let us not for­get ani­mal wel­fare too.

TechEa­gle Ver­ti­plane x3 Hybrid eVTOL (cred­it: TechEa­gle)

TechEa­gle Drone Deliv­ery based in Luc­know, Uttar Pradesh has found a niche in the mar­ket, trans­port­ing ani­mal vac­cines to remote areas. Ten days ago, the com­pa­ny announced “The world’s first vac­cine deliv­ery for ani­mal live­stock using drones.”

TechEa­gle has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Depart­ment of Ani­mal Hus­bandry and the Gov­ern­ment of Arunachal Pradesh to improve health­care for ani­mals by pro­vid­ing rapid and safe deliv­ery of vac­cines in the state.

The drone com­pa­ny deployed its Ver­ti­plane x3 Hybrid eVTOL. It is India’s fastest and longest-range craft, capa­ble of fly­ing at a top speed of 120 kph for 100 kilo­me­tres on a sin­gle charge. It takes off ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter and then con­verts to fixed-wing mode. Once the drone arrives at the des­ig­nat­ed loca­tion, it con­verts back to heli­copter mode to land often in a small area of no-more than 3 x 3 metres. The craft can trans­port items weigh­ing up to 3 kg.

The drone flew from Kangkong and deliv­ered vac­cines to Paglam, fly­ing a dis­tance of 29 km. This took less than 20 min­utes. The road dis­tance from Kangkong to Paglam is around 120 km which can take up to 4 hours to dri­ve. There­fore, TechEagle’s craft deliv­ered these vac­cines 12 times faster than exist­ing ground trans­porta­tion.

Shri Tage Taki, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Ani­mal Hus­bandry of Arunachal Pradesh, com­ment­ed, “This is an his­toric event that has paved the way for improv­ing ani­mal wel­fare.”

Anshu Abhishek (cred­it: TechEa­gle)

Anshu Abhishek, COO and co-Founder of TechEa­gle, remarked, “Ani­mal hus­bandry is an impor­tant eco­nom­ic sec­tor and rear­ing of live­stock direct­ly influ­ences the socio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tion of Arunachal Pradesh.”

He added, “There­fore, it becomes nec­es­sary to ensure the good health of the ani­mals even in far-to-reach areas and to empow­er the farm­ers by cre­at­ing a robust infra­struc­ture via drone deliv­ery sys­tems.” TechEa­gle is to assist the Ani­mal Hus­bandry depart­ment in estab­lish­ing drone hubs across Indi­an states.

The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2018 and tri­alled the world’s first tea drone deliv­ery in Luc­know, Uttar Pradesh. It also com­plet­ed Asia’s first cold chain vac­cine trans­porta­tion in the state of Telan­gana in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the WEF.

Fur­ther­more, it car­ried out drone deliv­er­ies of Covid-19 vac­cines and med­i­cines in remote areas of Himachal Pradesh and Megha­laya, dur­ing June 2021, as well as India Post’s longest par­cel drone deliv­ery of 46 km, tak­ing less than 30 min­utes in the Kutch region of Gujarat, one year lat­er.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.garudaaerospace.com/

https://jedsy.com/

https://www.redwinglabs.in/

https://www.techeagle.in/

(* Did you know Chi­na annu­al­ly pumps out 11,680.42 mil­lion tons of CO2, over 7 mil­lion more than Amer­i­ca. The UK is ranked 18th behind Viet­nam, Aus­tralia, and Turkey)