Dunzo, a hyperlocal delivery platform based in Bengaluru, may conduct one of its first drone delivery trials this month with the assistance of Alternative Global India (AGI), a management consulting firm based in New Delhi, for healthcare, food, & other packages.
This will be marked as the first step of turning Dunzo’s dream of drone delivery a reality. The trials are likely to commence in July or August.
Ankit Kumar, the Managing Partner at AGI, said that they expect the trials to deliver immense data points that shall be used by Dunzo (1) to create a proof of concept and safety cases to be shared with the Director-General of Civil Aviation. It will also help the company develop drone delivery models in semi-urban & urban areas.
Dunzo’s DGCA approved plan
According to the latest reports, India’s civil aviation authority DGCA has approved Dunzo and drone maker Throttle Aerospace Systems’s plan to test beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) autonomous drones operations.
Kumar has been actively working with the Google-backed hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo Digital as a consulting partner to create a roadmap for drone inclusion in their present system.
The firm has also set up its Dunzo Air Consortium with 8 members with expertise in different fields like unmanned traffic management, unmanned aerial vehicle systems, long-term evolution, drone operations, 3D mapping, and safety, insurance.
Founded by Kabeer Biswas, along with Co-founders Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha in 2014, Dunzo is an Indian startup that provides its delivery services in Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Jaipur, and Hyderabad and has now ventured its way into the drone-delivery systems. It started out as a small WhatsApp group and transformed into a hyperlocal app-based service.
Dunzo’s new initiative for drone deliveries has helped it in increasing its revenue while building a loyal user base. The government had received over 27 applications from companies for BVLOS drone experiments in 2019 but approved only seven out of the 27, including Zomato, Swiggy, Zipline, Redwing, and Honeywell.
