Paras Aerospace eyes entry into drone-based agri services

Drone manufacturer Paras Aerospace proposes to foray into offering drone-based services such as spraying and seeding in early next financial year. Paras is one of the drone manufacturers that has recently bagged an order to supply 400 agri drones to fertilizer major IFFCO at a cost of ₹42.2 crore

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Pankaj Akula, CEO and Co-founder, Paras Aerospace said the company expects to start offering drone-based services to farmers in Maharashtra and expand to other States such as Gujarat, Andhra and Telangana among others in phases. The company expects to offer drone-based services such as spraying of agrochemicals and fertilizer and also seeding of crops.

Inidgenous tech

Paras Aerospace, which has already started the manufacturing of drones would start delivering to IFFCO from mid-December onwards, Akula said. Paras is also looking to reduce its import dependence on drone components by developing the indigenous technologies such as the flight control systems among others. Presently, it imports several of the drone components, mainly from Taiwan.

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Paras Aerospace expects to close the current financial year with revenue of ₹45-50 crore, about a seven-fold increase from the previous year’s ₹7 crore, Akula said. For the financial year 2024-25, the company is targetting aggressive revenue growth of over ₹220 crore, which will come from both drone sales and the service offerings, Akula added.

Akula believes that the next agricultural revolution in India would be propelled by the usage of the drone technology, especially the drone spray technology. Using a single drone, spraying can be taken up in almost 25-30 acres in a day, whereas a manual labourer can do it in four to five acres.

Akula maintained that the drone spray services would be cost-effective and more efficient when compared to manual spraying. While manual spraying costs ₹800 per acre, the drone-based spraying services cost about ₹400-500 per acre, almost half the cost of the prevailing rates for the manual services, he added.