India’s services company Garuda Aerospace says it’s extending the reach of its work-around to the nation’s 2022 protectionist ban on drone imports – and the gaping hole created by excluded DJI craft – through a new agreement with a quintet of specialized international producers compliant with those restrictions.
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Surging Canadian drone, software, systems, and artificial intelligence company Draganfly has announced a manufacturing and distribution partnership with Hyderabad-based geospatial technological company Remote Sensing Instruments (RSI), designed to provide it access to the expanding, but also protected UAV market in India.
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Embraer’s urban air mobility unit (UAM) Eve has struck a multi-faceted deal with aerial service provider BLADE India that includes an order of 200 of the Brazilian company’s future electric takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
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India’s aviation industry regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), is sounding an alarm over increasing drone pilot training scams in the country. The agency says several “fake” schools have cropped up across the nation, falsely claiming to have been approved by the DGCA.
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India has imposed an import ban on drones with immediate effect. The ban, which was notified by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday, prohibits the import of drones in all forms – Completely Built-Up (CBU), Completely Knocked Down (CKD), and Semi Knocked Down (SKD).
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India has many sacred rivers, but that doesn’t mean they always get respect. The Yamuna River is so polluted this week that devotees had to wade into a kind of noxious bubble bath to celebrate the festival of Chhatt Pooja. Watch this drone video that shows the Yamuna’s toxic foam.
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The state of Telangana in India is beginning trial runs for the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, medicines, and other healthcare items using drones from today. For this “Medicine from the Sky” project, logistics company Blue Dart has teamed up with drone delivery startup Skye Air Mobility and UK-based Unified Traffic Management (UTM) technology platform Altitude Angel.
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After junking a contentious drone policy that made industry compliance virtually impossible, India has published new “Drone Rules, 2021” with an aim to become a “global drone hub” by 2030.
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India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, wants to make its capital city, Lucknow, safer for women. And it wants to do so by establishing a broad-ranging surveillance setup that uses tools such as drones, facial recognition-enabled CCTV cameras, and AI-based video analytics. However, in the absence of robust data privacy laws, critics fear the program will infringe upon the privacy of citizens in a state infamous for communal polarization.
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As India prepares to celebrate its 75th Independence Day on August 15, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has instructed all security agencies to be extra vigilant about a possible drone attack. Meanwhile, Delhi’s Red Fort, from where the prime minister of India hoists the national flag and addresses the public, will receive “360-degree” anti-drone coverage in the form of rooftop watchers and skilled marksmen authorized to shoot down any drone approaching the restricted airspace.
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COVID air travel bans may continue to frustrate holidaymakers, but in India, the skies are finally opening up for business. Only four months after it was introduced, India has junked a contentious drone policy that made industry compliance virtually impossible. Taking its place is the new Draft Drone Rules 2021.
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India has decided to free its drone industry from countless complexities and sluggish bureaucracy. The new draft drone rules proposed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) – Drone Rules, 2021 – promise to bring in an era of trust, self-certification, and non-intrusive monitoring. Here are the 20 biggest takeaways…
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In what can only be described as a win for the drone community in India, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has repealed the “UAS Rules” that came into force in March 2021. Based on the “valuable feedback from academia, industry, and other stakeholders,” a new set of draft drone rules are being introduced to regulate drone-related activities in a manner that they do not pose any risk to the safety or security of people and property.
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A friendly word of advice to officials and media in India still going bat do-do over an alleged terrorist drone attack on one of the nation’s air force bases: Don’t do the work of extremists for them. That’s a reminder that anyone responding to suspected terror action should remember, but one particularly worth shouting above the hysterical din still raging in India more than a week after the June 27 incident.
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Skylark Drones, the only Indian company to rank among the top four drone service providers in the world by Drone Industry Insights, has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A funding round to fuel growth in new geographies. This new funding follows the company’s previous seed funding round, which took place in 2018.
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A modified drone design is about to make the hard, dangerous work of harvesting coconuts a whole lot easier. At least for those who actually pick the delicious one-seeded drupes for a living.
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Scrambling to turn back the surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths sweeping the nation, India has broadened testing of drones in delivering vaccines and other medicines to Beyond the Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) destinations.
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Authorities in India have authorized test use of drones for COVID-19 vaccinations as part of their response to the unprecedented surge of coronavirus across the country.
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Drones have been placed on a temporary ban in India’s entire Puducherry region as prime minister Narendra Modi plans his visit to the region. The news was shared on Monday by the District Magistrate Purva Garg. This type of ban is something we have begun seeing more and more often due to past events.
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Indian drone manufacturer ideaForge has secured $2 million from the venture debt firm Blacksoil to complete its orders. The news comes two months after the company received funding from the Indian Army to produce a high-altitude variant of its SWITCH UAV.
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India’s locally built Rustom-2 drone is expected to pass its next round of testing in April, flying at 27,000 feet for 18 hours as the country plans to remove its dependency on other countries.
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A passenger flying from Dubai into India’s Kempegowda International Airport was caught trying to get four DJI Phantom 4 drones, 1.3 kilograms (2.9 pounds) of gold, and four iPhones into the country. The man was caught after getting off a flight at 3 a.m.
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Global safety certification company UL has been approved to test and certify civilian drones to help companies meet the standards set out by India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Ministry of Civil Aviation for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS).
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The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been given the go-ahead to use drones to capture new angles of the 2021 Indian cricket season. The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) granted the BCCI a conditional exemption.
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