Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
IdeaForge: The Homegrown Drone Company Protecting India’s National Interests
0 Playsin 50 minutes
How did Ankit Mehta build IdeaForge into India’s leading drone technology company?
In this episode, host Akshay Datt explores his journey of creating mission-critical drones for defense, public safety, and industrial applications.
Ankit shares how IdeaForge scaled through India’s funding winter, developed cutting-edge autonomous systems, and positioned itself as a leader in the rapidly growing drone market.
Key Highlights:
👉How Ankit Mehta built IdeaForge into India’s top drone startup
👉Surviving India’s funding winter and focusing on sustainable growth
👉The role of autonomous drones in defense and public safety
👉Overcoming government procurement challenges for defense contracts
👉The future of drone technology in India and the global market
#DroneIndustry #DefenseTech #DeepTech #IndianStartups #HardwareStartups #PatientCapital #BootstrapStory #IPOJourney #DefenseProcurement #MadeInIndia #DroneManufacturing #TechEntrepreneurship #IITFounders #MissionCriticalTech #IndigenousTechnology #StartupInsights #TechPolicy #DroneRegulations #HardwareVsSoftware #TechFounders #IndianDefense #StartupStrategy #EntrepreneurshipIndia #DeepTechStartups #DefenseContracts #TechInnovation #startupjourney
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Defense Tech Post 26/11
00:00:00
Speaker
We wanted to make products for our defence forces when 2611 happened. was in india's history the twenty six eleven moonmbai terror attack we are on twenty Our should be doing this job for operation.
00:00:14
Speaker
Because our technology genuinely can survive from a takeoff altitude of 6000 plus meters or so at minus 30 degrees operating in the desert in Rajasthan. So we have very survivable, operable assets as compared to anybody else globally.
00:00:29
Speaker
I've heard of things like vaccines getting delivered through drones. Himself has shown a tremendous amount of interest in this particular ah project. Of course, on an experimental basis as of now and happening at... How does that happen
Meet Ankit: Drone Industry Pioneer
00:00:41
Speaker
then?
00:00:41
Speaker
So, Ankit, welcome to the Founder Thesis podcast. ah product nation and to become a product nation a trial project is going to be beginning which will test drone delivery of vaccines this will be a big booth to healthcare care centers that are not
00:00:57
Speaker
so andke the welcome to the founder thesis podcast I want to kind of start with the understanding what exactly is a drone and what are the different types of drones. And, you know, there is no one better than you to talk about drones.
00:01:13
Speaker
ah You have built one of the ah best known drone startups in India, had a phenomenal IPO a couple of years back. So, you know, let's get into the business of drones.
00:01:24
Speaker
ah So first of all, tell me what's a drone and what are the different types of drones? so
Understanding Drones: History and Tech
00:01:30
Speaker
Thanks, Akshay. I think you know drones can be understood one technically and one in general what or how it transitioned to being called a drone.
00:01:39
Speaker
So essentially, if you think about it, in the Afghan wars and in you know terror operations around Pakistan and these areas, there were these large aircrafts that were being piloted remotely from probably ah the soil in the US directly.
00:01:59
Speaker
Now, these assets ah essentially used to make specific sound when they used to fly low and it was the drone of an engine. And that's how concept or idea of a drone in that one sense, it started being called a drone because of that sound, right?
00:02:15
Speaker
and And therefore, that became the characteristic characteristic definition of this technology. But as such, you can find a lot of technical names for it. People call it uncrewed now.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's cool to call it uncrewed, not unmanned. But you can call it unmanned aerial vehicles or you can call it... ah remotely piloted aerial vehicles and stuff like that. So ah the technology is essentially the ability to control an aircraft ah remotely from the ground or operate it or it can operate completely autonomously with no ah person on board.
00:02:56
Speaker
So that's broadly the technology and, ah you know, the common usage of this technology started coming in when a lot of these hobby aircrafts and hobby flying that a lot of people used to do. In a way, these hobby aircrafts or hobby flying or as it is also called RC flying was when an operator had direct control over the ah wings of the aircraft, over the control surfaces of the aircraft or the propulsion of the aircraft and throttle.
00:03:25
Speaker
That was one way of operating, but as the technology of ah you know, technology started to get miniaturized, you started to get commercial sensors that people were able to deploy and measure the attitude and altitude and many other facets of small hobby aircraft.
00:03:45
Speaker
And when you put a autopilot or a brains, ah like we like to call it, onto a drone, that can essentially, ah instead of the operator needing to control the control surfaces to keep it flying, it would fly it on its own.
00:04:00
Speaker
So that is what ah is basically what converted a regular RC aircraft into a drone in that one sense or an unmanned aerial vehicles as we commonly call it now in the technical term.
00:04:13
Speaker
So that's what a drone is all about where ah you are able to put a brains on a remote controlled aircraft and it is able to fly the drone itself. and then your job is not to fly the drone but to execute a mission.
00:04:28
Speaker
Now you could execute that mission by giving it direct commands of moving up and down, going left or right, or moving forward or going backward.
00:04:39
Speaker
That could be one way of controlling it which is called as a remotely piloted aircraft. where the flying is still being done by an operator on the ground, or you can do it autonomously where you just give it
Autonomy and Military Impact
00:04:51
Speaker
coordinates. You give it coordinates of going from place A to place B, and it figures out how to go from place A to B on its own.
00:04:59
Speaker
And ah you know the place A and B are most in most cases GPS locations. So you have you know ground coordinates or coordinates in the GPS domain. And you just give it latitude, longitude and altitude at which it needs to go and it figures out the path. So these are two ways of doing it. Now, in some cases, full autonomy means that all of this will happen on its own. It will decide to go from point A to point B on its own.
00:05:24
Speaker
And if there is a outcome that you want at that point, it will deliver that outcome as well. In cases of war, that outcome can be releasing a... weapon or releasing a food packet or whatever, right? So this is typically in a very common ah parlance what a drone would imply.
00:05:42
Speaker
And yeah, I think that's the technology that the world is, it's ruling the roost right now insofar as our conflicts are concerned. How do you categorize drones? Is it based on horsepower or like, you know, with a vehicle, you have like SUV as a category and a sedan as a category. So what are like categories in drones? Right.
00:06:07
Speaker
So drones can be as small as recently you saw a small article floating around that there was a mosquito sized drone that was built in China. And there are certain similar versions that were built in the West as well earlier.
00:06:21
Speaker
And then there are drones that can launch from the palm of your hand, ah from the fingertip of your fingers to you the palm of your hand, something which is less than 250 grams or so, to drones that can fly all the way up to the stratospheric level.
00:06:40
Speaker
you have drones of all varieties, of all sizes, and many of them have wingspan which is larger than a Boeing 747 or something like that. So, ah there are aircrafts of any size and shape that can be a part of being unmanned or uncrewed like we call it these days.
00:07:01
Speaker
So, that technology depends on what use you want with the technology, right? So, usual drone that is leveraged for cinematography will be used for taking aerial shots or for photography or for consumer use.
00:07:15
Speaker
They are mainly meant for taking aerial shots of a various situation, maybe a video or a photograph or whatever. Now, these are drones that ah typically are very small. They can probably be carried in a backpack and you can deploy them and get your shots and lot of job done.
Drones in Law Enforcement
00:07:30
Speaker
When it comes to taking a much heavier sensor for that it same cinematography application, it could be a larger drone as well. But typically these are small drones that can go in a backpack.
00:07:42
Speaker
On the other hand, for various enterprise uses, drones are available for, let's say, for example, there are nano drones which are available for going inside a house and trying to find what is ah going on inside a house so that they can, before they before an officer goes in or a public safety officer goes in, they can actually investigate what is actually going on inside. if there are let's say terrorists or militants hold up in a house, can you figure out where are they hold up, how to do that mission kind of a thing. So there are small drones that can launch from the palm of your hand and you are operating them pretty much right outside the compound in that one sense and trying to investigate what's happening inside.
00:08:21
Speaker
Then there are drones which are slightly larger because you want to see the same compound compound and you want to observe that compound from maybe four five kilometers out so that you can plan and prepare your mission based on the intelligence input.
00:08:34
Speaker
then to know whether this is the right house to look at or target, you may probably need a drone that is launching from 15, 20 kilometers away, or you need a drone that is launching from 50 kilometers away or even hundreds of kilometers away because you want to launch hundreds of kilometers away, get closer to the border, try and observe that target on the other side.
00:08:54
Speaker
So depending on where you want to execute your mission and what is the nature of your mission, the launch location, or the observation point is going to change depending on your mission. And you have different different types of drones that can do this different different activities. Sometimes you don't know what you're trying to find.
00:09:12
Speaker
So what you'll do is you'll launch a drone that can fly for 24 hours so that it can keep doing surveillance. Or you will have a drone that can and do the same effect ah in, let's say, a few hours. Let's say five four, five hours, six hours, ten hours.
00:09:26
Speaker
Then you have other drones that can fly for less than half an hour. Or in some cases, 15 minutes flying indoor, your house is
Commercial Drone Applications
00:09:33
Speaker
sufficient. So, various types of observation or outcomes determine the kind of asset you will use, number one. Number two is that...
00:09:42
Speaker
What job do you want to do with the drone, right? So in some cases, you want to do the job of surveillance like we discussed right now. But in some cases, you just want to do the job of mapping. Now, satellites do mapping. We've seen that, right? Satellite maps.
00:09:57
Speaker
Similarly, aircrafts do mapping. An aircraft, if you make it unmanned and fly it very close to the Earth, you can map at a much higher resolution, at a much higher frequency and more consistently.
00:10:10
Speaker
So that's what a lot of drones are leveraged for. And mapping can happen in multiple domains. You can map ah for regular photo photo cameras or you can map using thermal. You can create thermal maps. You can create multispectral maps. You can create hyperspectral maps. You can create LiDAR based maps.
00:10:27
Speaker
So many types of sensors can go on a drone and different different size of drones can carry different different types of assets and do that mapping activity. Then you have inspection of assets like vertical inspection of assets you've seen drones doing chimney stack, flame stack inspections.
00:10:45
Speaker
yeah Drones can do inspection of power line towers. They can do inspections of telecom towers. So any vertical asset or any physical asset you want a deep inspection of, drones can be used for that. Or they can be used for delivery of something. right For example, in military, you want to target an object.
00:11:03
Speaker
Either the drone itself can become uh the object of delivery and what is known as kamikaze drones or loitering munitions that could be one way of delivering something to an end effect or you have drones that can drop something uh on the target or you have drones that can drop instead of a bomb a package a first aid package or some other sensor or something like that or you have drones that can do washing of buildings now you have washed drones that are washing buildings out you drones that can clean solar panels so there are
00:11:34
Speaker
multi-farious uses of this technology and there are many many categories and sizes in which they are available and then there are differentiation from the point of view of what propulsion you are using.
Drone Design and Propulsion
00:11:44
Speaker
You can use electric propulsion, you can use fuel cells, you can use ah you know conventional IC engine based regular engines or you can use jet engines as well.
00:11:55
Speaker
So if you if you see the recent news cycle, then the Shaheed drones that Russia was using, ah in their own version, they were earlier operating a regular IC engine type of ah aerial propulsion.
00:12:11
Speaker
Now in the latest generation, they are using jet style aerial propulsion. So, you know, it keeps changing and it keeps evolving and same asset can be powered by different types of propulsion.
00:12:22
Speaker
And there could be new types of assets that can be using different types of propulsion. So it all depends on use case. Typically, ah dual use assets, and assets that want to be operating in the civil space as well as in the ah defense space.
00:12:37
Speaker
ah Those kind of assets are better off being electric because the noise ah is much lesser for integration into the civil airspace. So I think those nuances have to be taken into account.
00:12:50
Speaker
So the layman perception of a drone is that it has this helicopter kind of ah revolving blades. ah It could be like four blades or whatever.
00:13:02
Speaker
And that is how it gets its motion. Are all drones like that with the helicopter kind of a form factor? No, that's a good question. So again, there are many different configurations of a drone. Like propulsion, there are configurations. Like a regular helicopter can also be made into a drone.
00:13:20
Speaker
ah Whereas, ah you know, to achieve the same objective, which is to take off vertically and to operate like a helicopter, you can have a drone that has minimum four rotors. In some cases, you can achieve that with two rotors also, with three rotors.
00:13:34
Speaker
There are some concepts where a single rotor can also act as a drone because of how people do research. But most common is four rotors, which are spinning in counter-rotating directions. They act pretty much exactly same like a helicopter can behave.
00:13:48
Speaker
And they give a pretty decent outcome, which is what you see flying everywhere in most opportunities and occasions. And then there are drones that can take off like a helicopter and transition into a regular aircraft kind of motion.
00:14:02
Speaker
So what these type of assets do is they unlock your ability to take off from anywhere. And then you can do your entire mission with high flight time because you are using a regular aircraft type of aerodynamics.
00:14:13
Speaker
and then come back and land like a regular helicopter. These are called hybrid fixed-wing VTOL drones. And then there are drones which operate like a regular hand-launched or bungee-launched or runway-launched aircraft type of drones, which are then operating like an aircraft, entirely like an aircraft and doing their mission entirely in that mode. In that case, you need slightly clearer airspace because they are launching from the ground and they have a certain glide slope.
00:14:39
Speaker
So you have to have a clear path ah for them to ah navigate that takeoff and the landing journey also has to have a clear path for
Air Traffic Management for Drones
00:14:49
Speaker
landing. So, depending on the type of configuration you choose, there are many variants of within this itself, like you can put wings up, wings down, whatever, like then then there are hundreds of ways in which these can be configured.
00:15:01
Speaker
but But mainstream are rotors? Like the VTOL is vertical takeoff and landing? means mainstream for civil, it is ah vertical takeoff and landing.
00:15:13
Speaker
Okay. But... Those four rotors... Correct. That would be the most common form factor. Exactly. and But if you look at defense, ah mainstream about... five years back would be runway operated systems because they would be larger systems trying to operate in much larger expanse of territory because they were used for certain types of missions.
00:15:36
Speaker
But now if you talk about mainstream, then, ah you know, literally hobby aircrafts that can that you can mount a small grenade or a, you know, RPG on have become ah mainstream.
00:15:50
Speaker
So mainstream keeps changing. But yes, today i would say the flavor of the season is that you have these small vertical takeoff and landing drones doing both surveillance as well as missions that can go and neutralize an adversary.
00:16:04
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So ah let's spend a little bit of time on civilian side first before we come to the defense side. um Yeah. you You know, like with cars, there are rules like at a red light, you stop.
00:16:17
Speaker
ah If I know a lot of quick commerce companies are experimenting with drones for delivery. ah And it makes sense. I mean, if you want to offer 10 minute delivery, the best way is through a drone.
00:16:30
Speaker
ah But how would the traffic be managed then if the skies are full of drones doing quick commerce deliveries? And I can imagine a place like Gurgaon might have like thousands of drones in the air if that actually happens.
00:16:42
Speaker
How would there not be collisions and stuff like that? So, you know, and so many it's a very interesting point you're bringing out, Akshay.
00:16:54
Speaker
Unlike ah vehicles on the ground, ah in the short term, I do not see the airspace density going up so much that we will have this traffic jam jam problem. Because see, in a three-dimensional space, first you get more space because you are not restricted to roads, you are not restricted to specific paths.
00:17:13
Speaker
Number two, ah you also have a significantly, um you know, I would say higher probability or lower probability because you don't have fixed paths to navigate. So there is very little chances of collision today. In fact, in my observation, there is not a single, in my opinion, recorded incident where two drones are collided with each other.
00:17:37
Speaker
It is usually drones ah you know colliding with the manned aircraft and usually the reason for that to have also happen is because either they are operating very close to ah where the helicopters fly and the heli density is higher or for some reason that has happened or they are very close to the airport because that's the only time a commercial aircraft is low enough for it to encounter something like that. So as long as you take care of the perimeter of ah airports and make sure that the altitude is below a certain altitude in most cases, the air density or the density of utilization of drones is not that large today that we need to worry about collision between two drones.
Regulations and Challenges in Drone Operations
00:18:17
Speaker
There is more chances of a drone colliding in a building than chances of the drone colliding in another drone at this point in time. So, but having said that, I was part of the unmanned traffic management committee. We were coming up with the policy guidelines for the same.
00:18:33
Speaker
And it will ultimately happen through unmanned traffic management. And unmanned traffic management will have its airspace rules. It will segregate. The first job is to get everything to report their position just like we have ADSB or we have transponders on aircraft. All civil aircrafts have those ADSBs and transponders to manage the traffic so that their real-time position is known.
00:18:58
Speaker
Similarly, drones will have certain type of ah sensors that will emit their position and that position will ah become an important vector because if a system has to de-conflict, it has to de-conflict based on real-time intelligence of the aircraft. Now, there could be real-time and non-real-time deconfliction. So, for example, I could file a flight plan and I could segregate the two flight plans so that those flight plans can never intersect, both in time and space or in time at least.
00:19:27
Speaker
So, depending on what we do, there could be that based on deconfliction. Then there can be deconfliction which is real-time based on the actual position and real probability of collisions with each other. So, ah you can basically come up with the math to ensure that these are ah taken care of subsequently sufficiently and we don't have any immediate issue of traffic management in the air right now.
00:19:49
Speaker
ah There may be certain, you know, construct new construction can cause ah surprise more likely than another drone will cause a surprise in the air. Birds can be another thing.
00:20:01
Speaker
Okay. ah Is it currently free for all? I can just go ah to Amazon, buy a drone and fly it? So there are are, so think of it like what, you know, is required to fly a drone is similar to what is required to operate a car on the road.
00:20:18
Speaker
ah You need a homologated car. In drones case, you need a type certification. ah You need a license plate. In drone's case, you need UIN or unique identification number.
00:20:30
Speaker
And the third is that you should be operating in a space you're allowed to operate. Just like you can't trespass into anybody's private property, you have certain grades of the operating zone within the airspace.
00:20:44
Speaker
So one of them is called green zone up below 400 feet and outside the perimeter of airport from up to a certain distance or outside the perimeter of certain critical installations, it is green zone.
00:20:58
Speaker
In a green zone, you are allowed to operate without taking any prior permission as long as you have the previous two conditions met. Or in some cases, if you are operating something less than 2 kgs, you don't even need that. And just like you need a driving license, you need a pilot certificate to operate in the civil space.
00:21:15
Speaker
So that is again similar to driving license. You need a drone pilot license. RPTO gives you a license and then you have to ah essentially, you are allowed to fly. and youre allowed for What is RPTO?
00:21:27
Speaker
ah Remote Pilot Training Organization. So essentially... ah So, these organizations, just like driving schools, ah take your do your coaching for flying as well as then make sure that you are qualified or certified to be a pilot for these type of drones.
00:21:44
Speaker
so So, it's very similar to what it takes to operate a vehicle legally. Very similar to that. ah When you buy a drone, who gives you the UIN? Is there an authority which issues a UIN? Yes.
00:21:56
Speaker
ah Director General of Civil Aviation issues an automated UIN on a type certified drone. Okay. Okay. Okay. So why aren't quick commerce companies using drones more? Is there some regulation that needs to be cleared up or is it just about the economics that is cheaper to use runners on the road than drones? It is presently cheaper to use runners on the road because of the fact that A drone has a battery that is a very heavy power consumption element and imagine like a typical drone that is doing deliveries is lasting for about half an hour in the air.
00:22:33
Speaker
So you're operating at twice the capacity, you're discharging the battery at a much faster rate than the capacity of the battery and that typically has an adverse effect on the life of the battery.
00:22:44
Speaker
And that leads to higher cost of ownership of ah but per flight or per delivery on the battery itself. Then you have the issues of the airframe amortization because it's a flying asset. There is a certain a life of the airframe that you're flying. Then there is, of course, other fee that you may have to pay for the takeoff landing spot, etc et etc. So overall, the cost is a little bit higher at this point in time.
00:23:07
Speaker
But that's the objective in front of the drone industry to bring that cost down significantly. And also because rules don't allow it right now in the sense that you will not get a type certified drone that can do a delivery activity beyond visual line of sight. So currently the certification scheme that we have for type certifying only accounts for visual line of sight operations.
00:23:31
Speaker
And obviously if you take off from one location and go to another location and then you have to land, you are getting to be without visual line of sight on the asset. And therefore, that operation is something which is presently not certified. That aircraft is not certifiable because what they want to ensure is that there is airworthiness and no obvious failure will happen on the way to doing this job. So, there are certain rules that have to evolve and then it will be more comfortable to operate. Right now, whatever is happening is on a pilot or an r and d basis.
00:24:02
Speaker
So, you're saying in India, for civil use, ah this rule applies of visual line of sight. Right. Yes, presently yes. For certifying the drone, there is no official restriction but certification is not the drone, then previous conditions don't get met.
00:24:20
Speaker
I've heard of things like vaccines getting delivered through drones. How does that happen? Experiments. A lot of experiments, temporary waivers, exemptions, those kind of things.
00:24:31
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay, okay. Got it, got it. Okay. ah is ah yeah Is this expected, this like beyond visual line of sight ah permission? Yeah, there is there is active work happening on certification for that.
00:24:46
Speaker
It will take some more time because we are going through a lot of teething issues on implementing the visual line of sight rules. So once that gets into force, we will have the method or the pathway to certify the drone assets to be compatible with beyond visual line of sight operations.
Civil Drone Market Overview
00:25:02
Speaker
Then a lot of these applications will get unlocked. What are the issues in implementing visual line of sight rules? ah but in In general, you know the speed at which we are able to certify the capacity at the regulator, the understanding of the ecosystem, it's basically it has to stabilize. night We have to get into this regime a little bit better and try and fix so the gaps here, understanding gaps here, speed gaps.
00:25:30
Speaker
Speed gap is a very big issue. Then there are certain restrictions in terms of what can be certified, cannot be certified. that can create certain commercial ah sort of challenges and non-challenges. So there are some issues that have to be fixed as a part of, i mean, as a part of evolving and implementing any regulation, you will have these kind of issues. So we just need to pace up on solving those so that we can prepare ourselves to address the bigger challenge of operating drones without this other part as well.
00:26:01
Speaker
Okay, okay, got it. Interesting. How big is the civil drone market? what What are the major... demand drivers in that civil drone market? Because obviously quick commerce is not because of that visual line of sight. Correct. So mapping and mapping activity is a big driver because doing large scale geospatial mapping, India is a very important sort of, I would say, country that has adopted the large scale mapping approach in a very big way in this domain.
00:26:29
Speaker
And that allows you to essentially map fairly large areas in the country because a lot of it is in green zones as well. to do mapping and create property cards for both ah you know arable land, non-arable, habitated land or forest land or e etc. So, you are able to create very, very good geospatial views of the domain and those geospatial views can be leveraged for various developmental and project monitoring activities et etc. So, that is one part.
00:26:58
Speaker
Is this a government spent or... Presently it is government, but there are a lot of private entities who are bidding for projects, they would want that input or they are doing construction, they would want to understand how the construction is progressing.
00:27:13
Speaker
So a lot of mapping activity goes in these kind of analysis and outcomes. Then similarly, if you look at the area of inspections, power line inspections, power line vegetation management,
00:27:29
Speaker
railway track, vegetation management, e etc. There are many such activities which are very useful commercial activities where this is deployed. Oil and gas pipeline monitoring, right of way inspections,
00:27:40
Speaker
ah Like had earlier mentioned, inspections of utility
Industry Players and Ecosystem
00:27:44
Speaker
assets or constructed assets or operating assets on a large plant, ah telecom tower inspections. There are many such use cases.
00:27:52
Speaker
In India, roads, there is a mandate that they will get payment um only after the drone has surveyed the job. and the activities. So there are many such rules that have come up where the technology is being used on the civil side. Then they're being used on the law enforcement side for traffic management, for ah crowd control, emergency response. There are many such activities there.
00:28:15
Speaker
They're also used for cleanliness management, asset inspection, asset availability management, as well as, ah you know, what in some cases they are being used for stray dog monitoring and stray animals monitoring. Like lots of like umpteen number of use cases are there where the technology is being used on the civil side very aggressively in our country as well.
00:28:37
Speaker
And globally, I mean, many similar applications are deployed for the technology. So these would be like VTOL drones with a SIM in it, which allows them to transmit data real time. there would be some computer vision happening on the video feed to give some meaningful analytics or recommendations. Analytics wasn't a very... ah So no, so mapping happens on still images.
00:29:04
Speaker
You take stitch still images and you're taking overlapping still images and you're creating a map. It is very similar to how you know it happens for satellite and all. They create maps by taking overlapping images and stitching them together, etc.
00:29:17
Speaker
Now, in terms of surveillance activities or monitoring activities, yes, it can happen on a video real time. And in those cases, analytics is something which is coming into the picture now, into the frame now.
00:29:29
Speaker
It wasn't there earlier, but now it's coming into the frame. For example, recently in one of the... events in Maharashtra called Pandarpur Yatra our drones were deployed for the 10-12 days to make sure that we are able to do crowd counting using AI and that crowd counting helped them identify choke points or potential points where the threat of let's say stampede is higher So they can then redirect the crowd, reorganize the entire space so that they can prevent a situation where overcrowding is happening in one area, which can lead to some kind of a problem. So those are the kind of activities our drones and technology is involved in. And that's where AI comes into picture because it's able to give insights, which allow them to take real time decisions and then do other things.
00:30:16
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Got it. ah Help me understand ah the drone industry. Are there separate hardware and software players? Like, would there be a company which is just providing the computer vision and analytics stack?
00:30:29
Speaker
ah And there would be other companies which are more on ah selling drones? Like... So, there are in the drone industry, there are component providers who provide, let's say, something like a propeller or motors or motor drivers or autopilots.
00:30:44
Speaker
So, each discrete subsystem that goes into the UAV, there may be individual providers, people including the structural elements like the carbon fiber tubes, rods, sheets, etc. etc Then you have players who sort of system integrate that into a drone and then you have players who make the software to control the drone and there are players who also make software to do post-processing and then post-processing ke baad mein there are people who do ah software analytics.
00:31:15
Speaker
So they take all of that post-process data into analytics or they take the real-time data into analytics.
IdeaForge: Solutions and Strategy
00:31:20
Speaker
So depending on fair how the what solution the customer wants, different different elements are created. So you do have vendors across the entire chain.
00:31:28
Speaker
In some cases, it may be one vendor rolled into one. It will be all of this rolled into one. Like, for example, is in the case of what we do at IdeaForge. Barring making um you know the final sort of screws and certain sections, we get everything made to our spec with our vendors and ecosystem. And then we put everything together. It's our spec, our design.
00:31:52
Speaker
You put it together as a proprietary product, have our own control software on it, have our own communication stack on it, have our own edge compute on it, have our own AI algorithms on it that is on the drone. And then there is similar setup on the ground.
00:32:05
Speaker
And then there is a similar setup created on the cloud where we help enable the post-crossing, etc. Now, many of these vendors who are providing these individual subsystems, if they are of the world-class order and if they are what are required by the end customer, then they are integrated by us into a custom platform that can deliver that more seamlessly. So, there are players who can do full end-to-end and then there are players who can who do piece of it.
00:32:30
Speaker
And everyone who is making drones is a hybrid of one or the other as a combination. Okay. ah What is IdeaForge known for? Like, yes, you do everything, but most companies are known for being strong in one area or the other.
00:32:46
Speaker
So what is IdeaForge known See, our drone platforms are very, very competent. What does that mean? What's a drone platform? So basically, if you look at the aerial hardware, right the the bird that goes up in the air, we make some of the best performing birds in the world, which are very survivable. They can survive and operate in almost any environment because we are supposed to make things work in extreme environments like minus 30 degrees at 6000 meters, takeoff altitude to operating in the desert in Rajasthan to operating in the marine environment that we have. So, one, we have to do that.
00:33:21
Speaker
ah These are very reliable, very, very robust birds. Customers have done over 700,000 missions. So, the embedded intelligence on the bird to protect itself, to do a meaningful mission is also coming in with a lot of experience of the corner cases that we have seen across these domains, across these environments that nobody else would have seen in this area or in this region. So, that is one part of what makes us special.
00:33:45
Speaker
The second part that makes us special is that we also have the software capabilities on ground that can augment this by ensuring that we are delivering a solution to the customer. So the solution doesn't have to go to 10 people to get the basic outcome that they want.
00:33:59
Speaker
If you think of a security team, then they want a drone asset which is easy to deploy. It is automated and it is very survivable. It is reliable. It goes up in the air, does the job every time, comes back.
00:34:11
Speaker
Then you also want to make sure that when the data comes back to the ground control station, it is available on a command and control center. It has the ability to integrate analytics. It has the ability to do ah streaming of that information to 100 other people if required in an emergency if they want to also observe what is happening on ground.
00:34:29
Speaker
ah Depending on what the customer wants, we also deliver the full solution to them. And that becomes very important because otherwise they have to stitch a solution together from 20 people. And it's not a very ideal environment because you don't have one, in a way, customers like one neck to choke.
00:34:43
Speaker
So we become that single neck to choke when we do that. On top of that, we also offer all of the stack. as a service so in some scenarios we offer it as a service as well and that becomes even easier for the customer because then they don't have to think about technology obsolescence maintenance operations none of that is their headache we take care of all of it so there are both of these elements that are available with us as a service would mean for example um like ah mapping as a service where you are not selling drones and software to a customer, but you are selling, I will map this many square feet of area.
00:35:22
Speaker
jack Exactly. Now it can mean that, which usually we execute through our partners, Or it could mean that I want you to be here and I want you to give a persistent surveillance solution.
00:35:35
Speaker
I want you to give a solution that you will ensure that there is eyes in the sky pretty much at all times, every time of the day in this premises because I have problems or we have challenges which need attention of that nature. So depending on the type of use case, a specific solution and the delivery vector may evolve, but the combination is available with us.
00:35:56
Speaker
Okay, like the crowd surveillance would have been sold as a solution rather than as hardware plus software. Exactly, exactly. Okay, okay, okay. Otherwise, we would sell hardware plus software for somebody else to do the service on the ground.
00:36:10
Speaker
Ah, okay, okay. ah Is there a big ecosystem of these service providers who are further buying from you and selling it as a service? Yes, yes, yes. Any organized players in it or these are like local players?
00:36:26
Speaker
Many of them local players, some of them are organized players as well, but usually they tend to be regional. Okay. What is your preference? Service has that regional sort of flavor and element, right?
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah, service is all about access to customer. like Exactly. If you get the order from the customer, then yeah. yeah Execute locally, it's more efficient. It's less expensive, it's etc. Okay.
00:36:50
Speaker
What is your preference as a business? do you prefer to sell hardware plus software or do you prefer to sell subscription? as a you prefer We prefer to sell um hardware plus software because we do have a manufacturing setup and more volumes can be delivered in that fashion.
00:37:09
Speaker
However, ah not every industry is more most conducive to that alone. right Enterprises want outcomes. They in many cases don't want anything else. so we find we found our own flavor of what we want to deliver to them and we may actually prefer delivering that to them.
00:37:25
Speaker
Because what happens is that any new enterprise who takes on all of the burden, like i said, of operating, training, maintenance on themselves, usually they make the platform suffer or the use case suffer.
00:37:37
Speaker
So they are not able to get outcome out of that asset. So they blame the asset or the technology, whereas the challenge is not asset or the technology. It's just that it's not a conducive play for ah that market for it to use the assets as a ah you know standalone asset that they want to operate.
00:37:58
Speaker
So, I mean, it's a matter of, you know, what will be the most productive for the end customer that we try to zero on to that, you know, for an end customer, this is the most productive way of getting the benefit of the technology.
00:38:11
Speaker
Like the outcome should not suffer. Ultimately, that's what our objective when we go to a customer is that as long as you can guarantee that you won't make the outcome suffer, this is the right choice or that is the right choice.
00:38:22
Speaker
d It entirely depends on. ah Though ah typically the subscription model would be more lucrative, right? Because you are able to add on the service fees in it. time It is. it is and would be higher It is. And for all the talk about commoditization of the hardware, ah the service element becomes the more sticky element for you to continue to sustain your
Manufacturing and Scaling Challenges
00:38:44
Speaker
service.
00:38:44
Speaker
business So, yes, it is more lucrative. The annuity part of that business is exciting. But like at the same time, ah you know, it depends on what's the most scalable because scaling services of your own ah in in your own way can be a very expensive capital intensive affair.
00:39:03
Speaker
right So you need to find the right balance of how you can scale this and therefore it's more efficient to scale it when you do manufacturing production. It is slightly less efficient to scale it or becomes a little bit more geographically limiting when you're doing services. So that's why I said we prefer selling the system but we know for a fact that good solutions need to be present and we leverage that as a means of developing those solutions.
00:39:31
Speaker
So when we offer a service, we are essentially trying to create a solution out of it that will then become more scalable for people to take it to the market and deploy it in whichever flexible way. Also, I feel like your organization DNA is more of R&D.
00:39:47
Speaker
Like you love to yes create products, design products, design software rather than learning operational business and services highly operational business. And building ah building a good solution is a part of it, right?
00:40:00
Speaker
Building an automated, ah more seamless solution is a part of it, right? So that's something very exciting for us. What's even more exciting for us in a way is to predict where the world will go, where this technology will go, what the customers will demand.
00:40:12
Speaker
and to keep building in that vector. And that has proven to be very successful for us, particularly in defense, even in enterprise. We have predicted that the requirements will go in this direction and we have built for those requirements. And that allows us to create a very oh sustainable environment because then what you build can also be commercially successful, can also be leveraged commercially. You don't want to do development for the sake of development. You want to do it because you believe that there is a business to be done at the end of. that
00:40:43
Speaker
So who does your manufacturing? yeah You said you get it. It's it's like contract manufactured for you. like like you No, one no, no. So components. like for so it's an Think of it as automotive assembly line.
00:40:56
Speaker
oh We have the final assembly line. We make a lot of subsystems as well. So we have assembly line for several subsystems as well. And then we have ah you know vendors with whom we get our designs ah contract manufactured on the hardware side.
00:41:13
Speaker
In some cases, they will do EMS assembly for us because we don't want to put up a... ah PCB fabrication facility because we can't sort of generate those kind of volumes that can justify setting up a PCB assembly line. and What are these terms? e EMS, PCB?
00:41:29
Speaker
ah Electronic manufacturing services like what for example Dixon does. Dixon basically you know does puts together a lot of TVs, white goods for a lot of companies globally.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think LG, Samsung, not Samsung maybe, but a lot of these brands are manufactured by Dixon. So you're not looking at something like that? Like say Apple doesn't do any manufacturing, like Foxconn is probably biggest Yeah, Foxconn is their EMS partner, right? They get everything done by them.
00:41:59
Speaker
So you're not looking to go that route? You want to do it in-house? So what happens is that the nature of the business has to determine what you will end up doing, right? For example, the business was such a low volume, high mix business for us that you will not find too many EMSs. See, you have to be a minimum size, minimum capability for an EMS to sustain because yeah EMS is working on razor thin margins.
00:42:22
Speaker
So for an EMS to sustain, there has to be a different way in which they operate, right? So therefore, you have to find the right mix, All of this is a conversation today. When we started 15 years, 18 years back, there was no conversation of this nature. The only thing we had available was to do it ourselves.
00:42:39
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of it evolves because of your history as well. But we are not stuck to our history. We keep exploring yeah EMS. But then these challenges come that do we have consistent volumes? Do we have this, that? So, to do some of these things, you need that level of operational information.
00:42:55
Speaker
steadiness Right, right, right. It needs to be a mass market product for EMS to be. Exactly, exactly. Okay. But till then you get subsystems done, which they are used to doing, right? Then you get a job done and that's good enough for them.
00:43:12
Speaker
Do you see an iPhone moment for the drone industry? like iPhone was like a moment for the mobile industry where there was a mass market, new form factor. which like that's what happened with the That's what happened with all the consumer photography drones.
00:43:26
Speaker
A company in us called in China called DJI. They took over the world ah you know on that aspect and continue to rule the roost insofar as that category of solutions is concerned.
00:43:41
Speaker
ah but It is what it is. They've already taken the market and it's a market where restrictions may or may not apply anywhere in the world because it's consumer
Drones in Warfare: Past to Present
00:43:50
Speaker
market. So you can't sort of create a plank where you know you are like, for example, in security and defense, ah having something from a geography of concern is a concern.
00:44:02
Speaker
But in the consumer market, people tend to ignore that. So, therefore, there is a bit bit of a dichotomy of whether you would even want to chase that. But that moment has happened, to answer your question.
00:44:14
Speaker
And there may be a new wave, but on the consumer side, it's not visible right now. Miniaturization was one aspect that has also been achieved. Meaningful products are there in the miniaturization, miniaturized segment.
00:44:27
Speaker
So, I mean, in a way, also the DSLR movement for the technology is past because everyone everyone thought that, you know, everywhere now we go, we'll take photos with DSLRs. Everyone has DSLRs.
00:44:38
Speaker
But they are hardly in people's hands when they really need it because for most occasions, they will come and land up with a phone in their hand and that's it. So, you know, these things happen. The moments come, they pass oh because it becomes mass market margins, volumes, everything gets consumed in a big way.
00:44:57
Speaker
But eventually, you enterprise in sustained need for the asset becomes the other area and vector to unlock. So we've chosen to be on that vector for us. But, you know, there are moments like these that keep happening.
00:45:11
Speaker
Another moment which is happening in the ah defense domain is this whole movement of FPV drones that are being deployed in Ukraine, Russia war, single-use drones that are going and this whole fiber optic drone.
00:45:23
Speaker
You've seen all of those news elements, right? So, that's again another moment which is happening in a very, very, I would say at a very aggressive pace. Rightfully you or wrongfully, they are happening.
00:45:34
Speaker
at this point. I want to zoom in on the military side now and let's start with the Ukraine. I think that's a good starting point to understand or is there a starting point you start before that? like Like tell me about the use of drones in warfare in military applications. So I think one of the earliest use of something akin to a drone in warfare was 1917 when you know I think Germans… 1917, 1917, where Germans basically took off some aircrafts and then just they just pointed them in the direction of London and launched them.
00:46:09
Speaker
while they While almost nothing landed on London, but that was one of the early sort of signs of, you know, a plane type of thing. attacking the adversary using this technology. So that's sort of how early ah this technology was had started to get deployed in terms of what is happening on ground. So, yeah, I think this is something which is very familiar. It's been over 100 years that the vision of deploying this technology has been there.
00:46:39
Speaker
And it has evolved and gone through many cycles. I mean, there was this this whole early phase where people used it. Then there was no real large conflict. And then U.S. started to use them in the Africa, the Afghanistan and many such areas in the Middle East and MENA region, etc.
00:46:58
Speaker
that was So you had that wave of large drones being used. Yeah. Those drones in Afghanistan were for targeted killing of high-value terrorists. Exactly, right. So, they would loiter for hours, find their targets and then be able to fire missiles on them, e etc. So, precision targeting was the big success in that time frame for those drones.
00:47:20
Speaker
And then you had... And those would have been like really expensive drones, like maybe a million dollars. Yeah, those were runway-operated drones. They were operating from a runway wingspan as large as a Boeing, price in hundreds of millions of dollars, operated from the American soil using SATCOM links.
00:47:37
Speaker
ah So that's what was happening, right? So you have a lot of those... um sometimes condescending descriptions that, you know, some some computer engineer sitting tens of thousands of kilometers away is killing people across the world, right? i mean, both military would probably not like it, but that was very effective way for them to do what they wanted to do at that time. So, I'm saying that is another use of drones. So, that evolved and then through a large part of the ah you know early 2000s and 2000s up till 2020, lot of use of drones was you know largely thought of as large assets that would be deployed. And then you had slightly smaller assets being used in the
00:48:23
Speaker
Armenia-Azerbaijan war in 2020, where they were able to use slightly these smaller assets to do targeted operations, which made Azerbaijan win the war.
00:48:35
Speaker
So that became a huge talking point. Just zoom in on that a bit. like Like how did Azerbaijan use drones? These were like kamikaze drones? like they would These were not kamikaze. These were drones that carried weapons on them.
00:48:47
Speaker
And they were loitering around to spot people in trenches and to look at tanks and then they just sort of launched missiles on them. And people people had become sitting ducks because the trenches were fully exposed from the air.
00:49:02
Speaker
And once a bomb explodes in the trenches, the impact ah all across the trench was very, very severe. so Many such deployments maybe and then movement of tanks was halted. So, it was the first time it was used to this kind of effect in the war. Who was the supplier here? China or Turkey or Russia? So, Turkey was one of the suppliers in Israel.
00:49:27
Speaker
Turkey and Israel were the two suppliers of technology in that war. okay So, you know, that side was like the, the like which technology? Azerbaijan side. Azerbaijan side. Azerbaijan was using? They were using the Turkish drones and the Israeli drones. Why did Turkish drones win over Israeli drones? I would have thought Israeli drones. No, no. or So, they both were using, like the same side was using drones. Like Armenia did not have any drones.
00:49:53
Speaker
ah Ah, okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. So, that way is right. So that's what happened and that changed the color of war as we know it.
00:50:04
Speaker
But people thought that that class of assets is what will you know get victory in the long term. But actually that class of assets very quickly became redundant in the Ukraine-Russia war because in the Ukraine-Russia war, air defense units were able to neutralize these assets.
00:50:23
Speaker
very quickly. Initial days they were effective. The moment air defense came into picture, they got targeted and they got shot down. So then they started not being very effective. So the large assets, the large drones became, or runway operated drones became sort of less useful very quickly.
00:50:39
Speaker
Right? Like they were easy to track on a radar and you could then like do a surface to air kind of a rocket launcher or something like Exactly. Exactly. Take them out. Okay.
00:50:52
Speaker
Okay. good good good So that happened. So then, you know, I would say that the most, I would say evolution, like the abol evolution started to happen on use of these ah small drones to pick targets, which are tactical on ground, two soldiers, five soldiers, tanks.
00:51:10
Speaker
whatever An isolated tank is moving or a battery of tanks is moving and then you would take these small drones to locate their location, give that location to somebody who had a remote controlled FPV drone with a RPG mounted on top and then that FPV drone would go and strike on the tank or on those directly on those soldiers or on that vehicle and that started becoming a problem.
00:51:32
Speaker
a huge vector like a second strike vector at least if artillery has done its job. So drones were identified targets, small drones were identified targets, artillery would do its job. Sometimes then these FPV drones would do the job. so about 10% of what's getting hit directly first time is using these kind of assets.
00:51:52
Speaker
So, you know, it is it is increasing the adaptability and the nature of this beast is evolving quite rapidly in so far as this war is concerned. So those smaller drones became a huge talk of the dawn and today there is a lot of conversation on that asset or that asset class.
00:52:09
Speaker
What I was trying to say is that those larger drones became less important. Then the smaller ones became very important. Now there is a combination. There is this both small drones war happening at the very front lines within 10 to within 5 to 40 kilometers.
00:52:26
Speaker
There is a little bit of this war happening on these smaller drones. And then there are assets like the Shaheed drones that Russia is using in very large numbers that continue to not get caught on maybe air defense units or it's not.
00:52:40
Speaker
effective or efficient or they fly too low autonomous operations trying and going and striking targets deeper that the Russia is using. We don't have knowledge of an equivalent system on the other side, but those are the kind of elements that are successful in the war at this point in time.
00:52:55
Speaker
So that's the talk of the town. And if you talk about what's happening today, that's the talk of the town. Apart from the fact that In the early days, you would rely on GPS to give you locational position and for autonomy to operate a drone, ah you needed that GPS coordinator in that location. Now, because of air defense and jamming or drone defense systems, jamming is very, very rampant.
00:53:19
Speaker
And because jamming is rampant, GPS gets jammed very easily. So they lose the sense of position. The aircraft loses the sense of where it is in the world for it to navigate autonomously. So a lot of evolution of the use of technology in war is around making resilient systems that can resiliently navigate even when they are jan the GPS as available from satellites is jammed or if they can also operate in communication denied environment where the system is ah the communication is getting jammed they're not letting the uav receive any communication wirelessly to evolve and to work around that for communication people said that okay we will put a fiber optic cable and because in an fpv drone the pilot is the navigator so they don't need as such they don't need the gps position they just need directional sense and they're able to operate so lot of evolutions happened in so far as the tech is concerned and it's continuously happening as well like they say that
00:54:18
Speaker
The rate of change on the field is literally at the rate of every few ah every few weeks, there is a new new tactic being experimented on the ground.
00:54:28
Speaker
And the other side is adapting to the new tactic in that short time frame. And you know this offensive-counteroffensive is continuously on right now. It's it's the most... involved in a deep entrenched war that we have seen in the recent times and it's very, very fascinating. And then, of course, the use of drones in our own backyard, on our own borders, was again a very, very huge you know, testament to the fact that the technology is here to stay and it will be used for finding targets, for designating targets, for neutralizing targets and for also doing battle damage assessment. So, ah for all the roles that military needs, the technology is going to be leveraged and we saw that use during this skirmish and we are going to see a lot of that use again if ever we had to have another escalation.
00:55:19
Speaker
So, right now, Ukraine is the world's laboratory as far as evolution of drones is concerned. Absolutely. Totally. Yes. Who is supplying drones to Ukraine? Russia, you said, uses Shaheed. Shaheed sounds like not Russian, right?
00:55:33
Speaker
It's an iranian iranian Iranian design that the Russians are manufacturing themselves now in very large numbers. okay And insofar as Ukraine is concerned, Ukraine has a large...
00:55:47
Speaker
you know, sort of array of startups that are using Chinese, non-Chinese parts to make a lot of these FPV drones that are doubted to be very effective. Okay. Okay. okay Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
00:55:59
Speaker
ah So this, like, which, ah you know, there are a bunch of countries whose names are taken when it comes to drones like Iranian, Turkish. What are the strengths of the drones of these countries?
00:56:13
Speaker
So, for example, Iran has one drone from Iran is very successful, which is the Shahid drone, where they have a 30-40 kg warhead on maybe 100-200 kg drone that can fly at a speed of 100-200 km, 200 plus km per hour.
00:56:29
Speaker
And with the new jet version that Russia has built, 400 km per hour, go up to 1000 km deep on the enemy side and go and strike onto the target. So that is ah one success that Iran has. That's the that's my knowledge of what they're supposed to be good at.
00:56:47
Speaker
ah Turkish drones, the most successful drone. thishi This is an ice engine a based loitering munition. What is known as a loitering munition. Loitering munition means what? Like it can just roam around in the air.
00:57:00
Speaker
Exactly. So, a munition that can loiter has a lot of loiter time. A missile does not have any loiter time. right It can't sort of fly and observe and then take action. right It has to basically just go and strike.
00:57:13
Speaker
Similarly, for a loitering munition, it loiters, it observes the targets that it wants to neutralize and then goes and neutralizes those targets. On the other hand, Kamikaze drones are ah drones that probably just go and they have a designated target and they will go and destroy themselves at the target or on the target.
00:57:30
Speaker
So, depending on slight difference in CONOPS, ah you can call and one asset of one nature or the other nature. Con-Ops? What is Con-Ops? ah Concept of operations.
00:57:42
Speaker
Of how you intend to use technology. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. So, this is what Iranian drones are known for. So, Iranian, yes. Turkish, very, very popular drone called TB2. Made by a company called Baker.
00:58:00
Speaker
The drone is called Baryaktar. They called it TB2. So, TB2 is the most popular drone that they have. That's the most successful drone that they have, which was the one that was used in the Armenia-Azerbaijan war.
00:58:13
Speaker
ah Then they have other engine-operated class of drones. What are the features of that drone, TB2? Think of it as a smaller predator drone. It has the ability to fly for a few hours, has a missile bay and has very good surveillance payloads.
00:58:29
Speaker
So it can go loiter around, pick up a target, send out the missiles to neutralize the target, etc. Okay. Whereas a Shaheed will actually and destroy itself. Destroy itself. It's a one-time use drone.
00:58:44
Speaker
yeah Got it. Okay. Got it. so Okay. go So that's what these two drones are. So the TB2 is like a mini Predator. It carries missiles and it can launch the missiles, but it is not as expensive or as large as a Predator. So, you know, it is cheaper.
00:59:01
Speaker
And Predator is the drone that they used Afghanistan. Predator is the American one, exactly. that That's what they are most popularly known for. And a very successful drone, again, in a real war, they had to be relegated to a defense line.
00:59:16
Speaker
But on the in a war type situation, these assets are very, very crucial right now. So that's what Turkey is really well known for. They have certain other types of drones, which let's say, for example, Pakistan used against us called Songar drones.
00:59:31
Speaker
They are again IC engine based vertical takeoff and landing drones like quadcopter type drones, multi-rotor as it is called popularly. Those drones again, ah their claim to fame would be that they while they are very heavy, they use an IC engine so they can fly for slightly longer. They're very noisy.
00:59:48
Speaker
so even if you So you will know where they are coming from, what they're doing. But at the same time, they are using slightly different frequencies. They may be using some of the learnings from the war.
00:59:58
Speaker
to be resilient to GPS, easily be resilient to GPS jamming, etc. So, there are certain vectors that they have done which are effective. So, they were temporarily leveraged against us while there was no end effect that they were causing. They were just being there to trigger our air defenses or whatever is the guess everyone has.
01:00:17
Speaker
These are surveillance drones or they carry a payload? like Mostly the way they were used in this conflict, they were not, ah at least I am not aware of their use of for anything other than a camera, if at all.
01:00:30
Speaker
Because most of the times, if you remember the news, it was like they came and then they went away type of thing. But they were just smart about their tactics or whatever. so okay okay and was mode It wasn't necessarily that they are high tech, they're just there. like It's a drone that can be made and it was useful in that context.
Global Drone Leaders and Innovations
01:00:49
Speaker
Okay, easily expendable. Some of them would have been expended also because our air defense would have neutralized them. But in many cases, they would have probably just gone back.
01:01:01
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay. Got it. Okay. ah What is China known for in terms of drones? They are very good at consumer drones, hands down. They're the best in the world. DJI category of drones.
01:01:15
Speaker
Then they are of course very good at all classes of drones in that one sense that at least oh availability wise they're probably all classes of drones.
01:01:26
Speaker
Are they the best in the world? Are they the most battle tested? Maybe, maybe
01:01:36
Speaker
So that's what they are good at. Everything. As is usual, right? They make everything, every class. Everything cheaper than the world. yeah Of course, of course, of course. Okay, got it.
01:01:51
Speaker
and And what is India known for? India, I think if I were to talk about what we will be known for now, now that we have been also battle tested, is drones that can operate in genuinely extreme environments and do meaningful missions there.
01:02:07
Speaker
Because our technology genuinely can survive from a takeoff altitude of 6000 plus meters also at minus 30 degrees operating in the desert in Rajasthan. So we have very survivable, operable assets as compared to anybody else globally.
01:02:23
Speaker
Secondly, ah we will also be known for oh being there and being able to neutralize their targets on the other side, right? So that's something which was a huge advantage for us.
01:02:36
Speaker
Now we utilize or neutralize those targets by either picking up and being directed by drones, like for example, how our drones were used, Idea Forges drones were used to pick out targets and then give coordinates so that they could be specifically targeted and do battle damage assessment.
01:02:53
Speaker
Or for example, how the other some other drones were used by going and striking into the target or some of them were used to drop weapons onto the target. So these are the various ways in which the technology will be leveraged and is being leveraged and that's what we will come into our own for.
01:03:10
Speaker
If I were to say how and where we are the best in the world, then we are very, very good in the world when it comes to man-portable drones that can be used in such extreme environments for ISR missions today, progressively for multi-role output as well.
01:03:27
Speaker
but But for ISR role, man portable, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance role oh for building technologies for that, survivable in any environment, man portable, we are the best in the world as far as that capability is concerned.
IdeaForge's Defense Contributions
01:03:41
Speaker
Okay, impressive.
01:03:43
Speaker
So, ah what role did the Idea Forge drones play in this post-Pahalgaam skirmish? So, I think... You know, the post-Pahal GAM skirmish, our technology, because it is deployed with the users in reasonable numbers.
01:03:59
Speaker
They used it for the mission that it is meant for meant for, which is for surveillance, reconnaissance, target picking, targeting applications. So flown it to the other side, perhaps, given evidence. There were these videos released of the missiles striking.
01:04:16
Speaker
Those videos were most likely from Idea Force drones.
01:04:21
Speaker
we we We don't know. We don't know but there is a lot of use that has happened for battle damage assessment, picking up targets. oh But we don't get to know the exact details of the mission. In some cases we can see the ground station of ours and being visible in what they have released as a footage. So we know that they were used for sure.
01:04:43
Speaker
Now exact missions, whether they were used in that specific mission or not is something we can't share right
01:04:50
Speaker
ah how How is anti-drone technology evolving? and ah you know How are you...
01:05:00
Speaker
Anti-drone technology will evolve, so then drone technology will evolve. so just Tell me about that arms race and ah because I think in your... anti-drone technology, the first line of defense is jamming, right? So jamming was rampant even in this skirmish that we had.
01:05:16
Speaker
So they would jam the GPS as well as the ah communication of the system. So jamming is one part which is very, very common and it will be deployed in all scenarios. So it is usually called electronic warfare oh to jam the enemy assets and make sure that they are not operable.
01:05:33
Speaker
Usually it cut cuts both ways. If you jam, you will also get jammed. but But that is what it is, right? On the other hand... how how do you ah like How do you deal with it? Do you deal with it by giving the drone autonomy?
01:05:48
Speaker
So there is one method of giving the drone autonomy.
Anti-Drone Tech and Defense Strategy
01:05:51
Speaker
But autonomy is also predicated on knowing your position, right? Which I earlier had mentioned is available usually through GPS. That's the conventional technology. That's what the...
01:06:01
Speaker
Indian customers had also bought earlier. They wanted something that can operate off GPS, right? But ah if GPS is not available, which is what happens when you have a situation of GPS jamming, then how do you navigate?
01:06:14
Speaker
So for that, you have to create these resilient navigation solutions. For example, IdeaForge has created a visual inertial Odometry solution that can do navigation, even if GPS is cut off completely by using visual references on visual, by creating its own visual references on ground and navigating. So that is a tech that we have developed grounds up knowing that given what is happening in the Ukraine-Russia war, we have to build this capability for our country. So we built something grounds up for that.
01:06:43
Speaker
Similarly, if communication is jammed or if GPS spoofing is happening. So those kind of things, again, we have to do the exact same thing. We have to predict that this is going to happen, then use the solution that we can to make sure that it is not effective. So now, ah you know, post the Ops Indoor demonstrations happened in that vector and we have been able to demonstrate that we have that ability.
01:07:05
Speaker
if required by our forces, which will be required now. There is no other way in which they will absorb a new system because that's what they've realized. Like in a real war, EW will be there and you need assets that can survive in that environment.
01:07:22
Speaker
Okay, got it. Sorry, one sec. Okay. And... ah India also has anti-drone technology, right? I remember hearing about Pakistan launching 400 drones and ah they did not ah do much damage in India. ah So what did India use? Like like this jamming and... So India had a multi-layer defense.
01:07:42
Speaker
there would be one There would be elements of this jamming and, you know, jamming of both GPS and communication that would have happened. But in some cases, they may be jamming a different set of frequencies. The adversary may be operating at a different frequency or they would have applied some kind of GNSS.
01:08:01
Speaker
so They would have deployed resilient navigation solutions as well. So if that layer is breached, then the next layer is using defense using our modified guns that they were speaking about. Then the layer defense moved on to a lower class of missiles and then the air defense moved on to a higher class of missiles. and So we have a multi-layered defense so depending on what went through what a new layer would have been triggered and leveraged. So I think we were very well prepared for something like this and that's what showed up really nicely.
01:08:32
Speaker
But it was a layered defense and that's exactly going to be the future, right? i mean You have to have parity in what you use to neutralize what kind of asset. If you have a cheap drone coming from the other side, you don't want to you want to lose maybe a bullet or few, but not necessarily lose a missile. So it will entirely depend on the nature of asset that we are dealing with on the other side.
Engaging with Indian Defense Sector
01:08:55
Speaker
Okay, interesting. ah How did you... get to be a part of the Indian defense establishment? like Like how did, because you started Idea Force straight out of college, you were like a, essentially a bunch of 20 year olds. How do a bunch of 20 year olds win defense contracts?
01:09:15
Speaker
When we started, if you remember Akshay, we started because we wanted to make products for our defense forces. When 2611 happened, we were like, you know, our drones should be doing this job for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations instead of the senseless e Senses loss of life and also use of technology that could be even more disastrous like using a helicopter to do counter-insurgency counter-terrorism mission means it can be targeted which means you could have loss of a much larger asset at times.
01:09:44
Speaker
So that drove us to build the technology and we've always built capability that can put the soldier in front. that can ensure that they will want to use the asset.
01:09:56
Speaker
It is autonomous, it is reliable, and it is available for them to deploy in such situations. And over the years, we have worked with the government to create many examples of you know enabling this technology to do that activity.
01:10:11
Speaker
Of course, many of our demonstrations of the technology that we did in the early years led to them wanting to buy the technology which went through the conventional tendering and other processes.
01:10:24
Speaker
And because we were able to not just build capable technology, but also offer it at a competitive price as compared to our global peers even. for that matter.
01:10:35
Speaker
oh We backed a lot of contracts. We backed the first capital procurement contract from for small drones in the country in 2014 itself.
01:10:47
Speaker
And then progressively from there, we bagged another capital contract, we bagged multiple EP contracts. So it's about doing that and also predicting what the government will need, right? So we were very clear that they will need high performance assets because if they want to carry something in the field, buying something that is not performance oriented or not capable enough is going to be very tough for them to sustain because they will not be able to essentially utilize, they they don't want to great carry dead weight for most part of the emission.
01:11:21
Speaker
So we've designed, like we thought about our assets of what will be meaningful for the emissions. So demonstration of that really helped. Performance improvements helped. A lot of times we were observing what the world is doing and trying to buy similar assets in the country, but they were not necessarily relevant for the country and our operational environment. For example, there are a lot of hand launched asset that the West even deploys today and they were like the most deployed assets for them at that time.
01:11:50
Speaker
In those kind of assets what happens is that you need clear airspace for takeoff and landing and you need relatively low-heighted trees and low-heighted terrain and obstacles around you so that you can operate very comfortably and then you need a lot of clear land to land autonomously in that mode.
01:12:07
Speaker
Now that kind of area is not available in many places in the country, particularly where there are challenges. Either there are thick forests or do you have hills or mountains.
01:12:18
Speaker
So, you know even if the Indian kind government wanted to buy assets of that nature, We developed Switch as a platform so that it can do vertical takeoff and can do the rest of the mission in a regular aircraft type of mode and come back and land so that they get both the high performance of a fixed wing aircraft but the flexibility of a helicopter in a single bird.
01:12:41
Speaker
So those kind of forward looking Measures helped as well, right? Because that allows you to, you know, do the right thing irrespective of the limitations of the process that we have. And that's what we take a lot of effort in into knowing what is really needed and then design based on what's needed rather than what they've asked for.
01:13:03
Speaker
A lot of times what they've asked for can be deficient because of the constraints of either their process or even knowledge of availability of for that. So, you know, suppose I'm a like fresh out of an IIT and I have an idea for something which will help the military or, ah you know, I want to sell to the defense sector.
01:13:27
Speaker
ah Help me understand how the defense sector procurement works. um You said that you demonstrated technologies ah way before you actually... got into the tendering process what are the different ways in which ah the defense sector procures technology you know what are some ah advice that you can give to young founders who want to sell to the defense sector so see i think selling to the defense sector ultimately is about uh
01:13:59
Speaker
building a capability that is useful for the end customer. You need to really work hard to make it useful, make it contextual to their operational environment, operational context, and then participating in the process of what it takes for them to acquire technology. right So, I mean, in general,
01:14:25
Speaker
There are many such departments like the Army Design Bureau, there are research labs and industry interfaces in all the three defense verticals. And those can be good hand-holding mechanism to help you both understand the customer requirements as well as test and deploy and be able to encourage. Now you have IDEX as another vector.
01:14:49
Speaker
Then you have whereas TDB as another vector. IDEX is the defense innovation program where they float problem statements which they want to get a solution on.
01:15:01
Speaker
And then those problem statements are partially funded by ah the government as well, up to the tune in the basic level at one and a half crores for a three crore project or to the tune of 10 crores another type of project. And then there is another one that allows up to 25 crores of investment from the government side in the development. So there are many levels. So IDEX is another way in which you will know what they want.
01:15:27
Speaker
And you can build in that direction, in that one sense. So you're saying those are ways in which you can engage. Actively soliciting ah startups to come and learn their problems and design solutions and even providing them some sort of seed funding to ah make the innovation happen.
01:15:49
Speaker
They are. They are. Usually these are matching grants, but they are doing. in some form or fashion. it It needs to be... Obviously, we we will always want a lot more because this is a monopsony market where for many of these technologies, there's only one customer.
01:16:04
Speaker
So, you know, that customer has to be invested in a little bit as well for it to be a commercially viable solution, right? So, that's what is... Eventually, that's what happens.
01:16:16
Speaker
ah Have you seen... a change of attitude ah by the defense sector in terms of respect for Indian made products, respect for made in India?
01:16:29
Speaker
I think now, yes, I would say that that has evolved over the years. oh Having said that, I would still say there are pockets that still keep looking at the West, like whenever there is an urgency.
01:16:43
Speaker
There is an innate belief that the West would have a solution and we may not, which is not the case, at least insofar as this domain is concerned. Insofar as ah drones is concerned, I think for certain category of systems, we have in-house capabilities and the good part is that we can build any capability you want.
01:17:02
Speaker
So to some extent, yes, because there are now proven products that are working on field. They are being used in both high altitude and in you know planes. ah They have been battle tested now.
01:17:15
Speaker
They've been operated in that environment. So yes, on one hand, we have that. For example, they have certified our switch UAV as fit for military use ah through their entire quality certification process. So There are many such examples of successes on the Indian side.
01:17:32
Speaker
Netra was the first example that we created alongside DRDO, where we were able to seed a drone ah with our forces and make it successful in their operation. So there are many examples. Netra is our flagship quadcopter series, which four rotor series that we deploy for mission critical applications.
01:17:54
Speaker
So, it's the series that is capable of operating at 6000 meters, etc. Okay. This is an ISR drone. This is again ISR. Multi-role. They are the most multi-role assets that we have because on these drones, we can replace the payload to carry some payload as well, some dropping capabilities, some...
01:18:13
Speaker
multi-sensor capability like hyperspectral, lidars, oblique cameras, multi-spectral sensors. So we have a lot of solutions available that can be deployed on that platform because of the flexibility it occurs.
01:18:26
Speaker
and Okay. Coming back to that selling to defense. So first is understand the problem and design for which you're saying there are government initiatives which help you understand and design. ah What next? Like if you have, like say you had the Netra drone, then what is the certification process like? Who certifies? How how does the purchase of it happen? Like that ender process and all?
01:18:48
Speaker
but Right. So you have to go through the process. In defense, certification doesn't happen upfront. You have to go through the tendering process. You have to demonstrate that ah you comply to the technical requirements that they have put on each and every element. And then once the technical requirements are certified, you have to be the lowest priced bidder in most cases for that opportunity.
01:19:10
Speaker
If you get a contract, Then they will take you through that entire process of like, for example, that's the process of what it took switch to become certified for fit for military use because it had gone through the entire process of evaluation of not just technology, but also the production supply chain. Everything is investigated to say that, OK, now this is fit for military use. It can be deployed for defense kind of use cases.
01:19:38
Speaker
Okay. ah What is the VC ecosystem like for ah companies which are selling to defense? it ah Is there a lot of VC interest in this? And you've been through both a VC funded journey and a bootstrap journey. Just take me through that as well.
01:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, it was very hard initially and now there is a lot of people who want to, at least initial checks, you will get a lot of people to write initial checks, right? So, earlier it was very, very tough.
01:20:07
Speaker
How many years did you bootstrap?
01:20:12
Speaker
and How long was your bootstrapping period? So from 2009 till raise any equity capital. twenty seventeen twenty fifteen actually we almost did not raise any equity capital How did you survive? Like, were you able to... Our own revenues, it was tough. It was very, very tough. But it was largely through our own revenues of selling the drone systems.
01:20:40
Speaker
Because that builds a different muscle of building something that is useful. That's also very helpful in that one sense that you focus on your product. You make sure that you have a good product that survives the customer's use cases. And they are able to buy more and more of those systems. They are encouraged to buy more of those systems. So...
01:20:58
Speaker
it's ah It's a different muscle you built. You were ah selling to defense from day one or you had other kind of customers also? Our actually first buyer of the drone was... ah So we we sold some autopilots, etc. to our government labs before we sold our first drone.
01:21:18
Speaker
And our first drone was actually sold to one of the state police forces for special operations team that they had. So that was our first sale. And initially, actually, we had more traction on the CAPF side, the Central Armed Police Forces or the CRPF, PSF side than we had on defens defense defense.
01:21:39
Speaker
Then subsequently, defense came in and now they are majority of our business. but But that's what
Current Market Position and Financials
01:21:44
Speaker
it took. right It takes time to get inroads into defense. What's your turnover currently?
01:21:53
Speaker
24, it was 320 crores. 25, it was 160 odd crores. So, those are again vagaries of being in this business. Serving defense because the procurement cycles can be very, oh I would say, non-regular.
01:22:09
Speaker
Ah, okay. how do you How do you survive then? Like by being frugal? Like because your revenue halved, did it lead to you and like reducing your payroll and stuff like that? or like Not really because we were adequately capitalized and we we understand that these cycles can happen in our business because of the nature of our business. If you have a very heavy...
01:22:37
Speaker
government dependency and particularly defense dependency, these cycles can happen. So those were not the real measures. I think it was ah building the right solutions. You build capability, you build technology, building, making sure that you are ready for when the next wave comes.
01:22:54
Speaker
And that's what we've done. like i mean, when the next wave came, we are ready with a lot of capabilities that otherwise would be very tough to build overnight. The only way to build them would be to get from somebody else.
01:23:08
Speaker
And getting from somebody else comes with a lot of problems of cost, of ah capability of performance issues. There are many, many challenges that can come if you don't have some of these capabilities in-house because the market sensing the opportunity is going to be extremely challenging for you to procure them and system integrate them and deliver.
01:23:29
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. So has the wave turned? I'm assuming Pehelgam would have led to a lot of orders. and Yes, yes. So, I mean, we had started to see capital procurement coming in, emergency procurement particularly towards the end of last year.
01:23:46
Speaker
And now Pehelgam has accelerated and Operation Sindhu has accelerated everything, which is which is what we are currently trying to create the right solutions for. What do you expect will be your revenue this year?
01:23:59
Speaker
but ah ah We don't make a forward projection. At this point in time, given the nature of our business, we like to close things and then talk about them before we can project.
01:24:11
Speaker
yeah But we do have an order book that we spoke about in the last earnings call. yeah What is that order book? 140 plus crores is the current order book in hand that we are executing now. mean, this is public information so I can share candidly.
01:24:26
Speaker
Right. What percentage of your revenues from defense? Last year, it was 60%. The year before, it was 70%. Okay. okay And the other revenue is what? Like ah mapping? Civil use civil business. so Public safety, mapping, enterprises, other government departments, et etc.
01:24:48
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. I'm sure this would have also caused your stock price to go to be quite volatile, how do how does it how does it affect you?
01:25:02
Speaker
like ah if you Like, if the stock price drops a lot, how does it affect you and the company and the morale and things like that? ah yeah Or is it that everyone understands this is part of the game?
01:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think at this point in time, we have to take it in our stride, the volatility, because, I mean, We know that our strategy works, we have to bet better on ourselves and execute on the strategy. and I think the rest of it is a matter of time.
01:25:36
Speaker
yeah Okay, okay. And ah who are you competing with in for defense procurement? like Are there other there Indian companies in that space? They say there are 800 drone startups in the country. so Okay.
01:25:51
Speaker
But who are the prominent
Competitive Landscape and Future Directions
01:25:53
Speaker
ones? Are there like startups or legacy businesses? Like say L&T or you know these kind of or like even Tata has some. At this point in time I don't think there is anybody who's not there in the drone business.
01:26:06
Speaker
So even like when I was in one of the deaf expos, there was a garment manufacturer who had a uniform manufacturer who had a drone on their booth. I have absolutely zero but absolutely zero cause to believe that everyone's there in the business or wants to be there.
01:26:25
Speaker
If they're not there, they want to be there. Having said that, the beauty is that, see anybody who comes in overnight, right The thing is that you can only be deep or wide in the short term.
01:26:40
Speaker
In the short term, you can't be deep and wide. You will find a lot of people claiming a very wide portfolio of solutions. oh You have to just look at the age that they have spent building the capability and you will know that their depth will be only as much, which means that they will be mostly system integrating things.
01:26:59
Speaker
And if they're system integrating things, they may even not have the full solution in many cases. right So you just, i mean, something's got to give, right? It can't be that everything is perfect overnight.
01:27:11
Speaker
That just doesn't happen. So you once you peel a few layers, you realize that either they will be too expensive for the customer's need for a sophisticated solution, or they will be too low in technology for it to be a meaningful solution.
01:27:26
Speaker
And then When you are so early in the game, typically the dependency on China is very, very difficult to avoid. And today China or China supply chain is a big taboo for our country or what we call as land border connected nations. Right. So that's a very big taboo in our defense.
01:27:43
Speaker
Right. parlance and therefore, you know, of these 848, you will find that majority will have a big struggle trying to get out of what can be built from off the shelf systems because all all the off the shelf subsystems are from China in that one sense.
01:28:03
Speaker
So it takes time effort to build a complex, sophisticated solution and short term it will be very expensive to people to build that. in the long term and in the ah depth, you can indigenize, internalize a lot and build something meaningful. And that's what we bet ah for ourselves, that we have spent that time to build that depth, which is allowing for to us go a little bit wider now.
01:28:31
Speaker
And within that also, we don't go very wide. We are very, in that one sense, focused in what we are building. but What we build, we are very certain that there is a need or a demand for that.
01:28:44
Speaker
Do you face a challenge of... Newer entrance leveraging of what you have built. It could be talent, like you have built expertise and people who understand the space, or it could be vendors. You have trained vendors who are supplying you indigenous produced stuff to reduce the China dependence. Is that a concern that you have of new entrance leveraging of what you have built?
01:29:10
Speaker
i mean they will, right? To some extent they will. That's what builds an ecosystem. That's what builds a community or whatever it is. So, mean it is what it is. We've invested in a drone component manufacturing company called Nautical Wings. Now, they will obviously supply. i mean otherwise what's the point, right?
01:29:29
Speaker
So, it's fine. I mean it is what it is, right? Because ultimately The choice is that we take on all the battles in-house and make it even more complex for ourselves.
01:29:43
Speaker
Or we at least let what is not IP critical happen with the ecosystem and then anything IP critical we do it ourselves. So, you know, the defensibility comes from our intellectual property and...
01:29:58
Speaker
ah thankfully we have tons of it in our software, in our hardware patterns, et cetera. So in that way, we just focused on defensibility for all of the business. Okay. Okay.
01:30:10
Speaker
So let me end with this. You know, what's your advice to ah young aspiring founders who are listening to this show, you know, who want to build their own business?
01:30:21
Speaker
Any suggestions that you want to share with them? I think, um you know, I for one really strongly believe in the fact that
01:30:33
Speaker
India as a country needs to become a product nation, right? And to become a product nation We cannot be doing me too stuff, right? India can't be merely doing make in India of the extent of EMS, right? a lot of people are essentially EMS shops for the rest of the world because the components they're not making, technology they have no ownership or control on and they're not even making something differentiated.
01:31:02
Speaker
So I personally feel that there is a strong need for making a differentiated product or a differentiated solution because without differentiation, you're not really going to ah build something that can compete or even live up to the expectations of the end customer who is depending on you to build cutting edge technology. i mean, if imagine if everyone's basically doing copy paste job in the country, then our country and our forces can never rely on our own companies to do cutting edge stuff that they need to get an upper hand in front of their adversities.
01:31:35
Speaker
I think building differentiated capabilities, investigating very deeply, not merely going and trying to build something. Trying to build something, you can do it on your own time and cost.
01:31:48
Speaker
But the ecosystem in the long term needs players who really know deeply about the domain and can contribute to that domain. I would for one want a lot of people to jump in and ah be a part of our ecosystem of where they are building something differentiated and have the control on the technology that is necessary today to build something unique.
01:32:11
Speaker
Otherwise, you know, it's a race to the bottom. it It doesn't help anybody. Actually, it doesn't even help the customer. Customer may get a lower price in the short term, but because nobody's building technology, you've taken the incentive or of building technology.
01:32:26
Speaker
You're not going to win in the long term because you will need the same improved asset next time. Who will give you that asset if you're not investing in... if the ecosystem has no ability to get more R&D spending So I think one has to think a little bit better of what to do.
01:32:43
Speaker
That I think is very critical, at least from my perspective. Apart from that, I think a good team really helps. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Ankit. It was a real pleasure.
01:32:55
Speaker
Thanks, Akshay. Great catching up.