Meet Aarav Unmanned Systems, a drone tech startup

The Unmanned Aerial Systems or what is popularly known as drones forms an extremely niche market. However, there is no denying the immense potential it has to open avenues for newer markets, especially at mapping geographical information system, monitoring crops, industrial inspection and more. There are a few Indian startups already at work to ensure people leverage these technologies and one such is AUS ( Aarav Unmanned Systems ).

It is founded by Nikhil Upadhye,  Suhas Banshiwala, Vipul Singh and Yeshwanth Reddy and incubated at SIIC-IITK since December 2013. Upadhye has completed B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Kanpur, Banshiwala has completed B.Tech and M.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, Singh graduated from Amity institute of Aerospace Engineering and Reddy has an M.Tech in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Bombay.

It is the visit to the US and participating in a competition at NASA to design a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – again, another name for drone) that weighs the least and lifts maximum payload, that led to the business idea. “We noticed that there is a lot of awareness to these aerial vehicles and people use these UAVs for various recreational purpose. In India, most of the people would have hardly seen one. After a lot of brainstorming on possibilities vs fantasies and a lot of technical scribbles, we were determined that utilisation of UAVs for engineering applications is the future of this technology,” Reddy explains.

AUS has been working on its drone prototype and supported technology for applications such as GIS Surveying, 3D modelling, Precision agriculture, Institutional research, Industrial inspection, Thermal inspection, Aerial Photography and Disaster/event management etc. After thorough research and development, the company made its first service ready only in June last year. It has also worked on a DRDO project routed by IIT Kanpur. You can look at one of its products Nayan here .

“We build the technology and our main aim is to make the UAVs more intelligent as we go on. We are an end-to-end solution provider​ ​which is very uncommon. The technology we will be offering will be economical and very simple to use,” co-founder Reddy tells us.

Though the company has been working on prototype, clarity on government norms and pre-set standards will help ease out hassles related to legal issues, and startups like AUS can better focus on the technology. Unfortunately, there is no clarity on the government norms yet.

While drone delivery is another promising field for the future, Reddy tells us, “Drone delivery has the potential to revolutionise the way we see logistics! However, this hasn’t been possible so far (despite teasers from a few companies/firms) owing to the limitations of the current state of drone technology. I guess it’s at least three to five years away from reality. Drones need to be more intelligent than they are now for this to happen. As a small example: they should be themselves able to identify if they are landing on someone’s head or at a perfectly safe point. Although significant research has been done in this front, it needs more time to mature.”

AUS recently closed Pre-series A or Angel round of funding that it is using to convert the technology developed so far into a market ready product. It is generating revenue via sales and services. The company also plans to work on data analytics to further spruce up the drone technology.