Swiggy may soon deliver food and medicines via drones in association with ANRA

Swiggy and drone company ANRA Technologies has announced that it has begun trials for drone deliveries in India. A statement read that the stakeholders from the Ministry of Defense (MoD), Directorate General of Aviation (DGCA), and Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) has awarded final clearances for the ANRA Technologies-led consortia to commence trials for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations in India. 

ANRA said its flight team will launch its first sortie on June 16, 2021 after months of planning, risk assessments, air traffic control integration, training, equipment preparation, and coordination. "For the next several weeks, the flight team will conduct BVLOS food and medical package deliveries in the Etah and Rupnagar districts using ANRA SmartSkies technology," it added.

Shilpa Gnaneshwar, Principal Programme Manager, Swiggy said, that,

"With an increasing number of technological innovations taking place to smoothen and fasten the last mile journey, it only becomes natural for us to explore the latest avenues available to maximise the benefit to our consumers. We are excited about the potential that drones offer and look forward to the trials on BVLOS operations for the use case of food delivery. Through our association with ANRA, we aim to put the long-range proficiencies of drone technology to best use and accomplish some ground-breaking trials."

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The BVLOS delivery operations are enabled by ANRA SmartSkies CTR and SmartSkies DELIVERY platforms, which provide execution and management of drone operations in controlled and uncontrolled airspace, ensuring the safety of the Indian National Airspace and seamless integration into the country’s legacy Air Traffic Control systems.

“ANRA’s deep roots in India and my personal family ties make me especially proud to have contributed to this historic moment for India, government stakeholders, and our partners. Knowing our technology may soon help deliver food and medical packages to underserved populations are what motivates and unifies our team,” stated Amit Ganjoo, Founder and CEO of ANRA.

Out of the selected participants in the programme, ANRA is the only UAS technology provider approved by the Government of India MOCA to lead two consortia as part of this pioneering initiative, it claimed in a statement. One consortium consists of ANRA, along with their partners Swiggy, Indian Institute of Technology - Ropar, and BetterDrones — a drone service provider which will focus on food delivery. The second consortium includes ANRA and Indian Institute of Technology - Ropar, and will focus on medical deliveries.

Additionally, the consortia will seek to understand any trade-offs between interoperability and open implementations, and specific technical integration requirements for functionality while determining acceptable performance envelopes for latency, reliability, availability times, and ‘near real-time’ aspects of communications. It will also seek to establish how other key emerging standards, including Remote-ID and Detect and Avoid (DAA), may be integrated as part of an overall Digital Sky UTM framework.

India is looking at the operations to fast-track its policies and prepare the local industry for a significant push into the drone services segment globally.