Govt approves ShopX - Omnipresent ecom drone delivery trials from Sept 1 

August 17, 2020: The Indian government approved ShopX – Omnipresent to start the trials on e-commerce drone delivery and ShopX has come up with a drone ‘AirTrain’ concept, for just in time delivery across Indian B2B value chains.

“This allows small retailers to pick ‘Drone Delivery’ as a delivery option and get a wide range of products delivered to them within 30-60 minutes. Currently, these stores are limited by what they can carry in their limited shelf space, and conventional supply chains typically fulfil their needs once a week. With AirTrain, they can get real-time fulfilment of products, thereby increasing their merchandising ability and sales. ShopX is already running one of the largest eB2B retail networks in the country, with over 2 lakh retailers on its technology platform.”

Amit Sharma, CEO and co-founder of ShopX, said, “With our partnership with Omnipresent, we want to put India at the forefront of utilizing drone tech for real applications today and intend to create a major disruption in supply chain especially for retail segment.”

The govt moving at record speed and has eased out most of the drone regulations for commercial operations by trusted service providers. It is backing BVLOS operations and creating automated Digital Sky platform which will allow authorized drone operators to fly in nearly 80% of India (Green and Yellow Zones) with automated real-time online permissions process. This would result in exponential growth in the drone market as a host of applications related to Ecom, food delivery and cross country mapping of highways, powerlines, railroad etc. It is expected that the drone services market with growing to about $2 billion in the next 3-4 years in India.

Omnipresent
Omnipresent comes with a background in this area. They had earlier done trial drone deliveries for medicine for AIIMS hospital in Delhi. ShopX and Omnipresent had jointly done trial deliveries in ShopX warehouses. Omnipresent has also developed in-house AI Engine called the Nerve Center which allows smart scheduling planning detection and classification onboard the drone. They are already empanelled by over 7 state Govt. agencies for drone-based services Agriculture, Telecom, Oil refineries, Factories and Survey applications. They have done over 1 lac acres of agriculture and city mapping.

Aakash Sinha, founder, Omnipresent Tech, said, “Our drones have been deployed in almost all states in India now, they have been especially useful in significantly improving the output of industrial factories by giving them actionable insights on structural damage, catching theft, accurate stock calculation, virtual 3d tours and accurate mapping. Recently, we also got recognised as one of the top 5 UAV companies selected by the Union Ministry of Agriculture to be given permission do precision spraying to fight recent locust attack via drones.”

The Jabong drone experiment
JabongSharing an instance from 7 years ago, Aakash recalls how they had tested the feasibility of drone deliveries for Jabong at the behest of then MD and Co-founder, Praveen Sinha. “He told us that once we could break through the technological and regulatory bottlenecks of the time, drone deliveries would disrupt the retail logistics space in the country. 7 years later, his prediction stands true.”

On being asked on the potential of drone deliveries, Praveen Sinha said that technology always holds the key in accelerating any sector and it is the same for retail. “A decade ago E-commerce was at its nascent stages in India and here we are at a stage where drone deliveries are going to be a reality. Once drone deliveries and 3D Printing become economically viable, we will see a disruption in the supply chain that no one envisioned,” he concluded.