MapmyIndia, the homegrown digital data and technology products and platforms company for maps, geospatial and location-based IoT, has come up with its solutions for the burgeoning drone industry. It also launched the Drone Innovation Challenge 1.0 in partnership with Drone Federation of India (DFI), a premier industry body that promotes drone-tech and strives towards building a safer and scalable unmanned aviation industry.

According to MapmyIndia, its solutions for drones are targeted to empower drone manufacturers, drone service providers, drone solution developers and drone users and enterprise customers. These solutions include products, platforms, and APIs for advanced and interactive 2D, 3D, 4D and HD digital mapping, GIS, geospatial analytics and AI, as well as real-time drone identification and tracking IoT and flight operations automation.

The companies can register and apply to the Drone Innovation Challenge and those qualified, will be given free access of up to Rs 4 lakh each worth of MapmyIndia’s solutions, usage credits and technical support. Winners of the challenge will be showcased widely and get up to Rs 1 crore or more worth of joint go-to-market support, business opportunities and funding support opportunities.

Details about MapmyIndia’s solutions for drones and the MapmyIndia-DFI Drone Innovation Challenge 1.0 can be found at .

Rohan Verma, CEO and Executive Director, MapmyIndia, said, “The Government of India introduced path-breaking regulatory reforms in the geospatial industry in February 2021, which liberalised, unshackled and unleashed the potential of the indigenous geospatial industry, for which we at MapmyIndia are extremely grateful. Similarly, they have started consultations for the draft Drone Rules 2021 which are aimed at liberalising the drone sector, which is a very welcome and progressive step.”

“India’s drone market will grow rapidly to a size of worth USD 1.8 billion by 2026, and we are focused on enabling, the best, most cutting edge drone solutions that positively benefit the Indian industry, economy and society and ensure our country’s and citizens’ safety, security and privacy. We are excited about the MapmyIndia-DFI partnership and are inviting drone manufacturers, service providers and solutions developers to participate in the Drone Innovation Challenge 1.0. In the past few years, we have funded and partnered with various drone startups and ecosystem players. We will help the winners of the Drone Innovation Challenge 1.0 and further scale up the indigenous ecosystem with joint go-to-market business and funding opportunities,” added Verma.

Smit Shah, Director, Drone Federation of India, said that India is projected to become one of the largest markets for drones. “While we focus on manufacturing drones in India, it is also crucial that we leverage India’s existing software development expertise to develop an indigenous suite of software solutions to create significant value addition for the drone ecosystem. We aim to find, support and promote such indigenous solutions as a part of this challenge,” said Shah.

“The MapmyIndia-DFI Drone Innovation Challenge 1.0, a unique competition, has been especially designed to encourage innovation at the grass-root levels, with an appeal for innovation-driven tech companies. This challenge, the first in a series of initiatives that have been jointly planned will help create new technologies and solutions that will not only enhance the utility of drones across sectors, but also make them accessible to millions of Indians,” he added.

Companies and innovations invited for Drone Innovation Challenge

Companies manufacturing drones, providing services based on drones, or building software solutions for drones are invited to apply for the Challenge and encouraged to leverage MapmyIndia’s products, platforms, APIs, and solutions to innovate and build:

• Drones and drone components and sensors that help in surveying, mapping, surveillance, inspection, delivery and transportation use cases across various enterprise, government, agriculture, mining, smart city, law enforcement, security and defence verticals.
• Drones meant for consumer, recreational and travel and tourism applications including geo-tagged photography and videography etc.
• Map-based drone software solutions like interactive ground control systems, drone fleet management solutions, industry-specific drone data processing and visualization platforms, unmanned drone traffic management solutions, drone delivery systems, drone surveillance and inspection solutions
• Drone monitoring, tracking and security systems, and solutions that help identify and counter rogue drones.