Satish Shukla –
Hello listeners, welcome to RawBotics. This is your host, Satish Shukla. And today we have with us, Rama Krishna, co-founder and CEO of EndureAir, a leading company in drones in India. Rama is an IIT-Kanpur alumnus who has a passion for unmanned aerial vehicle, which is also known as drones. So welcome to the show, Rama.

Rama Krishna –
Thank you, Satish. Thank you for having me here. And I am looking forward to a very insightful conversation with you. This is small introduction about EndureAir. At EndureAir what we are doing as we are coming up with a disruptive aerial robotics solutions, aero-robotics, other than… It’s also called drones, aerial and unmanned UAV drones, UAS., things. At EndureAir we have been developing disruptive aerobatic solutions for surveillance and inspection services. And we are also developing this next generation, cardboard drones, which will be more of the idaea, discussing in detail how this Indian industry is coming up, or global future of drone industry is also coming up. So, we work on helicopter-based solutions, unlike multi-rotor solutions.

Satish Shukla –
So, if I understand correct, a multi-rotor solution is a solution that has been shown in 3-idiots.

Rama Krishna –
Yes.

Satish Shukla –
And what would be a helicopter solution?

Rama Krishna –
Helicopter solution is actually a miniature helicopter, with a big rotor and a small tail rotor at the end. If you see a normal helicopter in air force, so that’s the miniature version of it.

Satish Shukla –
So, this would be a more stronger drone or a more durable drone to that extent. What would be the benefit of a helicopter-based drone?

Rama Krishna –
So, benefit of helicopter drones actually comes in angle of efficiency and performance. If you have to quantify it in a bit more technical level, it comes with endurance, it comes with the speed of the drone to reach the target location, it comes with reliability, it also comes with a low bill of material cost also. So, in order to make a drone aerial robotic or a drone business sustainable, you have to maintain this life of future of drone also, because all these drone hype in the market or public market, if you see, there is too much of hype, but actual business adoption is something we have to focus on to make a sustainable solution here. So that’s why we focus on helicopter drones, which gives us almost two times the performance, two times the life or half of the bill of material cost. So, we do develop in this area.

Satish Shukla –
That’s great. So, Rama in the last decade, we have seen a lot of policy changes around flying UAV drones. There was a time when there was a pizza company in Mumbai, which delivered a pizza with the help of a UAV drone, and then there was a complete backlash on this, then came a policy where you could not fly good drones. Now we again have changed a policy which is sort of being called as the drone 3.0 policy. So, you are one of the practitioners in this domain. So, can you brief us about how the policies have evolved, and what are the present guidelines around flying good drones in public?

Rama Krishna –
Yes, last actually three to four years have been a roller coaster for industry in policy perspective. There was more regulation in 2018, 19-ish, but there comes a couple of events that happened where these deliveries have happened, which have been a public concern. So, to address this, there was a complete ban on drones and 25 certifications or licence cells are required to operate a drone in public environment. So that was released back in 2019 and 2020. So, after this, what happened is the industry along with the academy academicians and also the industry experts have written, given the response on it. So, within a matter of nine to 12 months, so the whole policy has been changed.

Satish Shukla –
So, the policy that came in 2019, you could not fly a drone in public?

Rama Krishna –
Yes, and you do, in order to fly that period at least 25 licences, I was so stringent to work on the future of drones to do a R&D on drones also. Every stage of development of future of drones have been monitored by the DGCA. So that is actually not a practical way to go forward.

Satish Shukla –
DGCA would be directed general of civil aviation. So, they also control the rules around future of drones.

Rama Krishna –
Yes, unmanned systems also.
So, a DGCA – director general for civil aviation, along with the MOCA – Ministry of Civil Aviation and QCI- quality control of India, they have come together and they have released this latest set of guidelines. And this actually helps industry and also the academia who is working on research of drones a lot. So, in this process, they have streamlined everything to basically four licences or four regulations. In order just to summarise what’s further laymen, what should be these? The primary concern that they have considered is the privacy and the safety of the public. Because any drone that is flying should not intervene in privacy on security. So, they have come up with a certification of these drones. It’s called type certification. Any drone manufacturer who is manufacturing drones should get this drone certified.
And this includes detailed scrutiny of the software and the hardware. And the source of hardware also if it is coming from China, if it is autopilot. Because there have been some safety concerns with the Chinese components lately that is forming.

Satish Shukla –
And who does this scrutiny?

Rama –
QCI does this. After QCI does this validation of the checking of all the manufacturing processes and also the software side also. They forward it to MOCA and DGCA and they approves the type certification. So, this has been coming for the visual line of side drones. So visual line of side drone actually refers to the drones that we can see flying in front of you. The operation like it covers the applications like Agricultural drones spraying. It covers applications like land survey mapping and closed range surveillance of inspection operations. So, the certifications for this V-laws visual line of side is clear from 2020 or 2021 per say.
But the certification for BV-laws drones beyond visual line of side drones, which includes your long-range surveillance of inspection or your linear asset inspections for oil and gas industries or beyond a point where you can’t see the drone. That’s where it’s called BV-laws application. So, the certifications for that is going to be much more stringent or much more detailed because the drone is going to be getting operated where there is no person was there. So the certification body, QCI and DGCA and MOCA are panel duties that and this is about the manufacturing angle. But in order to come into a flying angle, so they have DGCA has released a digital sky. All the Indian map has been identified as three zones, green, orange and red zones. Red zones are basically around the security concern areas like airports or any DRDO labs or any field-fighting ranges of army. So, there you are not supposed to fly at any cost. Until the authorisation allows you to fly. Orange zones are slightly apart like 2kms away from these sensitive areas where you can fly with local authority permissions like police or a district magistrate and there are green zones where you can fly without any permission. But below an altitude of 120 metres.

Satish Shukla –
Okay, that’s great. That was very comprehensive. So, Rama, what is actually a drone? So, to the uninitiated people like me, we usually see drones during marriages taking photographs and then came a movie called URI where they showed that there was a student who was flying a bird who helped in the surgical strike. So, there are a lot of images of different drones that we have seen through movies and real lives. So, I want to understand this from an expert. What is actually a drone? If you could explain it to our audience, what are the essential components? How does it perform its action? So, we would really like to know that.

Rama Krishna –
So, drone is an unmanned aerial system. So, it implies a system that is flying in the air which is being controlled from the ground control station. So just before going, what exactly the drone does, I just want to break up the whole system buffers. So, any, like, if you see, actually aircraft, there are engines under the winds, wings which are being, which are generating a lift and there is a few slides where the whole cabin is resting right. Similar breakup is there in future of drones also. There is a propulsion which is being done by engine or brushless motors. And there is a power source, it can be petrol powered or it can be battery powered. And there is an airframe which is holding all the pieces together and there are payloads. Payloads are for specific applications. If it is for ISR application, it’s a RGB camera. If it is for mapping application, it’s a different multi-spectral camera. And if it’s for cargo delivery, then it’s a payload. So, these are the breakup of the components of the drone.
And there is a ground control station which is being used to operate or completely plan the mission of the future of drone. So, every bot has a ground control station. Every drone has this ground control station. So, this is the breakup of the drone. And how the drone works is basically we prefect all the latitude and longitude coordinates where the drone has to go and what the drone has to capture the video of or where the drone has to drop the payload. So, it all depends upon the type of mission. It’s a mission-oriented application. It can be cargo delivery application, it can be surveillance application, it can be a mapping application or in terms of agricultural drones, it can be spraying application also. So, these are the area if you have to spray.
Then the drone and the software, it will plan itself to cover the one acre or two-acre area with the fuel that is being loaded. So that’s how the drone components can be broken into. And if you want to know how this drone word came from, actually the male honeybee is called drone. And initial prototypes of drone in early 1900s are in shape of male honeybee. So that’s how the drone name came because of its resemblance to a male honeybee.

Satish Shukla –
Wow, So, do we have drones like honeybees today?

Rama Krishna –
Yes, we do have drones like honeybees which are being used in assault missions of military across the globe. Like US Army does a lot. And Indian Army has also inducted a lot of technology for this counterinsurgency, counter-terror CACT operations.
They’re inducting a lot of this advanced technology to minimise the loss of lives of our Javans. And also this technology is being inducted into NDRF and SDRF also to enhance their capabilities for the disaster management operations.

Satish Shukla –
Great, that was very insightful. So how did you come up with the idaea of starting a drone company and how did you finalise the name EndureAir? And who are there in your team?

Rama Krishna –
Okay, that’s a three-part question. So, I’ll first come up with my perspective on how we started Endue Air. I’ll try to do my college like I’ve done my bachelor’s and master’s from IIT Kanpur. In my first month of college, they have this intra-college competitions for technology. So, I joined this Aeromodelling Club there and the moment I was introduced to college, these drones, that’s a fixed-wing or multi-rotors. So, I had these three-idiots rancho vibes there. So, there’s a bunch of people who are working on similar quadrotors which was shown in the movie. And for a 17-year-old kid, that was a fascinating and more addictive thing to work on. So that’s how my journey with future of drones started. And two years I was doing extensive manufacturing work or flying work in IIT Kanpur.

Satish Shukla –
So, you were manufacturing drones while you were in IIT Kanpur?

Rama Krishna –
Yes, we have a club where we test a lot of manufacturing techniques like compositae manufacturing, balsa wood manufacturing, and also aluminium. So, we had to innovate because of the resource constraints because as a student you don’t have budget for that. So, we know that and we also represented IIT Kanpur in my second year in Texas A.
There was a competition by SA, so a society of aerospace engineers and they have an aerodynamic competition. So, we represented I personally was there, and all the way came third in there. But when I saw the winner’s drone which is by Georgia Tech, there was a difference between the research behind building the future of drone. So, we built a drone, but it’s based upon our experience, and they have built a future of drone with a systematic procedure. So that has made me realise the importance of R&D behind any product. And that’s where I got associated with Dr. Abhishek, who is one of the founders of EndureAir. And I joined his research group and at that time he was heading helicopter lab of IIT Kanpur.

Satish Shukla –
So, Dr. Abhishek was a professor at IIT Kanpur.

Rama Krishna –
At that time, I got introduced to him, he was a professor at IIT Kanpur. He is still a professor and a full-time co-founder and director of EndureAir.

Satish Shukla –
I really don’t know a lot of people who would have the guts to found the company when they are professor.

Rama Krishna –
So that itself is a storey because Dr. Abhishek, he has done his bachelor from IIT Kharagpur. And he has gone to University of Maryland for his masters and PhD. (Wow). And he was trained by the best minds of helicopter designers in the world so far. He was trained under Marathishanko. He was a Russian and he was the head of a mill design bureau which has built the mill-28 helicopter, the biggest helicopter so far in the world. (Wow). So, he was trained under other professors also there. And he brought his knowledge back to IIT Kanpur. So, at the same lab where the Abhishek sir was trained, they have been working with a lot of companies like Boeing or Bell or Rocket Maaden.

Satish Shukla –
Wow. Actually, these are some of the best companies in the world of aviation.

Rama Krishna –
Yes, they push the boundaries of these unmanned helicopters or unmanned aircrafts to a whole different level. And they are hiring the talent from University of Maryland. Dr. Abhishek was part of that group and he has intent to give it back to the nation from his initial days, from his bachelor days. So that’s why he has to reject those offers and he has to come back.

Satish Shukla –
So, he came back to India.

Rama Krishna –
Yes. {Wow). Just with the intention of starting a… like obviously joining IIT Kanpur. And in the long term he wants to transform his knowledge or his experience in terms of product through Indian Armed Forces. So, it is there in the back of his mind. So, but after 10 years of professorship we are sitting in a lot of IP. When I say we as a research group Dr. Abhishek and his PhD students, his master students, I was also one of his master students and PhD which I sdropped it later. So, during this time we want to commercialise the technology that we had, we had generated, and we had filed for patents, but patents are of no use until unless you commercialise those. And you finally give it to the end user which is Armed Forces in our area.

Satish Shukla –
So, Rama that was really very insightful to know different applications of future of drones. Tell me one thing, how do you see the future of drone industry evolving from here in India?

Rama Krishna –
So, the future of drone industry actually has been part of, it’s been categorised into three different segments. One being the manufacturers or OEMs and second being the drone as a service providers who are using drones and giving services to the end user. And third segment being the software stack, it comes to ground control software which is being useful to control the future of drone or developing a mapping software which converts a raw data to actually useful data. And mostly the video analytics or data analytics-based software and also the software-based swarm technology or unmanned traffic management, UDM software. So, this is a software segment and there is a dash, drone and service segment and it is an OEM segment. Right now, there is a lot of players like the EndureAir also and there are other companies who have been doing a couple of two of these three segments or being testing the waters as such. But over the years the specialisation is going to grow, and people are going to find the niche in terms of a segment and also in the drone as OEM also, the kind of applications that are going that is growing in a day-to-day basis.
One drone is not going to fit for all the applications that is for sure. And every application has its own sizable market. If it be surveillance or it’s a cargo delivery or it’s a narrow drone, small backpackable drones or it’s for drones for videography for shooting in marriages or shooting in films. So, every segment has its own volume. So as the next five to ten years, most specialisations or most specialists are going to evolve who has their own ecosystem when it comes to hardware or who has their own complete back end, not using open source. And drone as a service providers are going to evolve a lot because we have seen the similar pattern in automobile industry also, drone as a service actually will be much market than drone as a the OEM market itself because end user be it farmer or be it industrialist or be it any factory manager. So, they want to have the data itself and the data has to be generated or has to be collected on a recurring basis. It’s not a one-time job. Some of the data has to be collected every week or everyday basis. So, drone and service is going to evolve significantly and the market projections are also showing their drone as a service is a bigger market than OEM market. But that is for the 2030 and, 2035. But before that the future of drone has to be stable. The technology has to mature itself. So right now, the technology is at a stage where the OEM or the subsystem is being established inside India and also across the globe also. It’s going through the phase. It’s the way the technology is getting matured, and the life of the future of drone is being increased.

Satish Shukla –
So, what is the typical life of a drone?

Rama Krishna –
The typical life of a drone is being considered in terms of number of flights. So, I would say around 752,000 flights per drone.

Satish Shukla –
And the duration of this flight typically would be?

Rama Krishna –
You can say approx one hour.

Satish Shukla –
One hour, (yeah) okay. So, I heard that you mentioned about swarm drones. So, what are swarm drones exactly?

Rama Krishna –
Swarm drones is an upcoming application in drones actually. What it means is I’m controlling multiple drones using one laptop or one operator. So, I don’t have to operate 100 drones by using 100 operators. One operator with this laptop can give the command to multiple drones and it can do the job. Be it surveillance or be it inspection or be it a loiter munition. Loiter munition is an application where drone seeks the target and it dies down and destroys the target. So, it’s a basically loiter munition. So, the future of warfare is going to be as form of drones which can do is some batch of drones can do the surveillance and that batch of that particular segment of drones can communicate back the information to the cargo or loiter munition drones and lawyer ammunition drones upon the operator confirmation. It will seek the target and it will go and destroy the target.

So, this is the modern warfare is going to completely revolutionised by use of this swarm drones. And the same swarm drones can be utilised in healthcare or also your logistics delivery for a warehouse-to-warehouse deliveries also. So, in the future we are going to seek the swarm of drones which are pre-programmed or having a predefined routes of this warehouse is going to operate as a swarm not just an individual drone. So, imagine like controlling like 100 cars using just one driver. So, it’s going to minimise the human resource requirement also and it’s going to automate a lot of processes in this whole transformation. So that’s where this swarm of drones can play a very big role. Indian army has inducting a lot of this swarm of drones in their operation of their infrastructure. And yeah, in that manner swarm drones is going to be the next big thing in drones.

Satish Shukla –
And what are telepathy drone?

Rama Krishna –
Telepathy drone is a R&D concept which is being funded by DARPA, USA there. So, what exactly is like it’s a communicating with the drone through wirelessly. But from the human mind like if I want this target to be seeked so I communicate through my, like there’s a chip that is being inducted in the brain and this communication happens and if I have to rotate it or if I can sense my movements of head movements and it can also replicate my head movements there. So, if I want to see the left it will see the left. So, in that manner it’s a combination of VR and AR. So, in that manner it’s a telepathy concept.

Satish Shukla –
So, Rama you are the CEO and co-founder of a deep tech startup. Deep Tech is the buzzword right now. So, what are some of the key learnings that you would like to share with our audience who are interested in this domain of deep tech and going to start on their own.

Rama Krishna –
So, one of the key learning actually is to have a proper advisory board for you. Most of first-time entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs who are coming from the academia undermine this value of advisory board which can be a group of of expertise varying from business development in defence or business development enterprise or fundraising or marketing and team expansions. So, a lot of times the founders actually go through this trouble or go through these challenges which have been already faced and solved by the people have done this already. So, respecting them and also having them in the loop through this whole journey is something I would take it as my key learning, and I would suggest other co-founders also the same to have this solid advisory board for that.

Satish Shukla –
So, to a large extent they help you by not letting you reinvent the wheel.

Rama Krishna –
Yes, and you also should have an advisory team that doesn’t just say I have done this, and I have done that in that my time it is how it has been done. So, you need an advisory board who puts them in your position and advises you what is the best way forward for you or for your company not just saying some old storeys kind of a thing. So yeah, that’s the advisory board comes. And also, other session or other learnings would be like when you are comparing the global solutions that are available let’s say for cargo delivery operations. We are seeing Amazon has been doing gaining the traction in Seattle, California based area. So, we observed the cost per drone or operational cost for these drones. And also, we have observed the surveillance or the mapping cost per drone. So, what we have done at EndureAir is differently and what every deep tech founder should think of in how to minimise this operational cost or initial Capex costs or the initial installation costs of this infrastructure. So, in that manner like Indian or being from the IT Kanpur background. So that has helped us in bringing that R&D to cut down this operational cost.
That’s how we could able to maintain this sustainable business model for the scale actually. And one more thing is that all these learnings actually have come at a cost. Like it’s not likely from day one we know how to build drones. So, we took our own time to learn all these things as an IT Kanpur research group. We used to consult with a lot of Indian army commanders go there before anywhere itself. So, we used to test our drones at Ladakh or Tawang where the altitude is at 17,000 feet. The temperature was minus 5 degrees. So, all these learnings, all these experiences have helped EndureAir to kick-start with already a no hope. We haven’t started from zero but typical deep tech startup or typical startup if I have to assume if I’m seeing my friends who are starting their companies as of now. So, I can see the journey from the scratch. So that is the journey is full of learnings and you need the best mentors or best investors to support that. So currently Indian ecosystem is going through that transformation.
The way we are seeing the deep tech startups or the way we are giving the gestation period to startups to evolve or to hit the market at the right potential. So initially few years will be a rough for every startup and especially deep tech startup where we are bringing a sunrise in the sunrise industry like drones. It will take some time but when it’s going to be adopted, it’s going to be the adoption rate would be so high. And again, the scaling of the company will be a hurdle for the companies to keep up with that base. So, it’s just that inflection point we have to be there with the technology or push it to there. And afterwards the things will be automated by themselves.

Satish Shukla –
Very very beautifully covered. You have to stand till you reach the inflection point and keep on learning. So, Rama to close it on a lighter note. Can you share with our audience some good drone movies that they could watch if they want to understand different applications of drones or are there any favourite movies that you have around drones?

Rama Krishna –
You know to appreciate the usage of drones especially in the military applications where you are going to see a lot of action killings and other things. US has been the pioneer in using drones in their warfare right in Afghanistan or Pakistan. So, there have been couple of movies on these operations, drone-based operations, one is Eye in the Sky

Satish Shukla –
That’s one of my personal favourites.

Rama Krishna –
And there is a good kill. So, they use this predated drone which India is also buying. So, they use these drones to find the target militants which are hiding in their bunkers. So, the movies are about that and they are too good.

Satish Shukla –
Thank you, Rama. Thank you for an insightful conversation. Best of luck for your journey.

Rama Krishna –
Thank you, Satish. It was a wonderful conversation with you.