We were trying to solve a problem. At Marut, we were trying to identify the problem statement around dengue and malaria. We were using drones to eradicate dengue and malaria. Eventually, we moved into agriculture because there is a lot of manual labour involved, pesticide usage is unsafe, and traditional practices were ineffective. There is also a greater shortage of labour and low adoption of protective agricultural technologies. The major thought was whether we could make drones accessible, helpful, and affordable for the farming community. At the start, we did not directly manufacture drones — we were focused on building the technology. Over time, we started building the drones ourselves. Today, we have created an ecosystem where we train people, identify rural agri-entrepreneurs, provide them with drones, and they offer services directly to end farmers.

Initially, we were working on dengue and malaria, but that is more of a government-centric use case. We wanted a scalable use case with less government intervention, which is why we chose agriculture. In agriculture, many people in the farming community face health issues like cancer, and the younger crowd is moving away from farming. So we thought about building technology that the 20’30 age group could use to stay engaged in farming and support end farmers. That was the thought process.

Today, we are working primarily in the agriculture space. These drones function like tractors — essentially aerial tractors. They can be used for transplantation, seeding, spraying, crop monitoring, and pollination — six different applications. One drone handles multiple applications, enabling year-long usage in agriculture. That is our first product. The second product is a drone for afforestation, where we carry out planting in deforested areas. Next, we have logistics drones that can carry up to 100 kg, used for medical deliveries such as blood and vaccines, as well as cargo delivery. These are point-to-point deliveries, not last-mile delivery. We also have drones for surveillance purposes, used by industrial areas, police, and corporate industries. These are some of the product use cases we currently have.

If you look at other drones in the market, most are designed for one application only. For example, spraying drones are useful for a maximum of 150 days in a year. We have built drones that can be used for 365 days with multiple use cases and multi-utility functionality. Because of this, the entrepreneur or individual purchasing our drone achieves return on investment in less than six months, compared to nearly two years for other drones. We also build technology that does not require users to understand the science behind it. They just need to click — the drone software handles the entire operation.

We mainly provide drones for tactical surveillance and delivery purposes. We extensively support defence organisations and PSUs. From a warfare perspective, our drones are used for logistics delivery, surveillance, and tactical operations.

The thought process was simple — new technology requires new skills, and these skills can be acquired in less than a week. Unlike earlier times when courses took six months or a year, drone skills can be learned quickly. While building this technology, we noticed a shortage of skilled people. There was aspiration — everyone wanted to use drones — but very few knew how to operate or repair them, especially for use cases like delivery or surveillance. We identified this gap and started our first academy in 2021. Similar to a driving licence system, we provide DGCA licences, as a mandatory licence is required in India to fly drones.We currently have academies in Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, and we are expanding to Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. Presently, we have seven academies. Our aim is to eventually have one academy in every state and bring rural youth into the industry by training them to fly, repair, develop, and maintain drones for various applications.