Autonomous Aerial Spraying Drone
THANOS
Stage of adaption :
Cultivation Stage
TECHNOLOGY BRIEF
Agricultural Spraying as an activity in India is plagued by Manual Labour Shortage, Inefficiencies in Manual Spraying, Excessive Usage of Chemicals and Health Hazards of Manual Spraying.
We, at THANOS, have designed, built, tested and commercialized Autonomous Agricultural Spraying Drones with the highest flight time in India. This technology has the potential to eliminate drudgery from an activity that is extremely physically intensive and also hazardous owing to the chemicals used and the lack of usage of Personal Protection equipment by Farmers/Farm Labour. Please find below a high-level comparison between Manual and Drone Spraying:
We, at THANOS, have designed, built, tested and commercialized Autonomous Agricultural Spraying Drones with the highest flight time in India. This technology has the potential to eliminate drudgery from an activity that is extremely physically intensive and also hazardous owing to the chemicals used and the lack of usage of Personal Protection equipment by Farmers/Farm Labour. Please find below a high-level comparison between Manual and Drone Spraying:
BENEFITS
After 3 Years of R&D and Commercial Pilots with numerous farmers over 100’s of acres and with the partnership of Agrichemical companies, we can confidently say that:
• Drones reduce the dependency on the already dwindling Manual Labour
• Drones can spray atleast 6-8 times as much as Manual Spraying
• They spray in an extremely uniform and efficient manual avoiding any kind of overdosage or underdosage thus saving precious resources – Inputs/Money
• Drone based spraying eliminates the exposure of Farmers/Farm Labour to chemicals as they do not need to be inside the spraying area anymore
In addition to above, drone spraying can:
• Improve yield owing to timely treatment of Pest Attack
• Improve yield owing to elimination of loss from Manual/Tractor movement inside the field
• Reduce water usage by 90-95%
• Improve soil / water body health owing to the reduced amount chemical falling onto the ground / non-target areas. This is owing to the reduced water usage and efficient spraying.
TECHNOLOGY READINESS
Acquired more than 100 customers
Majority of our Customers are Individual Farmers (80+ Nos. of Farmers) spready across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. In addition to Individual Farmers, we have provided Drone Spraying R&D and Commercial Pilot services to numerous Agrichemical Companies and Agri Service Providers. We have worked with Global Agrichemical companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and are in talks with other top global and Indian agrichemical companies. One of our objectives is to test and validate majority of the Agrichemicals out there so that every farmer has access to this technology going forward.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Technology Not Protected
CERTIFICATION
Not Applicable
TARGET CUSTOMERS
We provide our Autonomous Aerial Spraying Drone Platform in 2 different ways – 1. Sale. 2. Service.
● In Sale Model, we cater to Agrichemical companies, Agri-Service Providers and Large Farmers by Selling our Drone, Training their Personnel and providing top-class After-Sales Service.
● In Service Model, we cater to 2 different types of Services:
o Spraying-as-a-Service on Per Acre basis: This is a service mainly for Farmers – Individual/Corporate. We cater to them in mostly in B2B2C mode through Agrichemical and Agri-Service Partners and sometimes in direct B2C mode.
o Drone Spraying R&D Trials: Agrichemical Companies and Agricultural Research Institutes typically carryout R&D activities to validate agrichemicals and various methods of spraying effectively. As part of this, we provide Drone Spraying R&D Services on a Per Day basis
SCALABILITY
Agriculture is one sector that has huge amount of scope for Automation owing to the physical drudgery involved in almost every step. Some of these activities such as Spraying, Seeding, Weeding, Harvesting and others can be automated to improve efficiency, save costs and improve yield. Majority of the Agricultural Lands need some kind of Spraying – Pesticides, Micronutrients, Fertilizers etc. India has an agricultural land of 400 Million Acres and Agricultural Activities are taken of similar acreage over the 2 major crop seasons – Kharif and Rabi. Around 1 Lakh drones are required to cover such a huge area on a regular basis. Japan and China have already proven the scalability of drone technology over millions of acres of agricultural land using tens of thousands of drones deployed every season. Spraying Drones can cater to following additional applications with a few modifications which makes their scalability even more quick:
• Seeding
• Fertilizer Granule Spreading
• Urban Pest Control (Mosquito Control and Disinfectant Spraying)
• Locust Control
LIMITATIONS IN COMMERCIALISATION
• Drone Regulations: We strongly believe that India can surpass Japan and China in terms of large-scale commercialization of this technology provided proper Regulations are in place. While India does have Drone Regulations, the regulations themselves are complicated/cumbersome for some applications and the implementation of regulations has been very slow. If the regulatory barriers to usage of this technology can improved, technology can be scaled up to cover 10% of India’s farmlands in just 5 Years.
• The other limiting factors –Import Restrictions for Drones or Components thereof, VC Investments, Unavailability of Sufficient Manpower are all related to Regulations directly or Indirectly.
TECHNOLOGY COST
On a Sale Model, we sell our Spraying Drone platform at Rs.5.5 Lakhs on a Single Battery Package and provide additional batteries at Rs.70,000.
On a Service Model, we charge Rs.400-500 based on Frequency and Scale of operations.
SOCIAL IMPACT
In addition to the tangible benefits of Input Cost Reduction, Yield Improvement and reduced dependence on Manual Labour; Drone Spraying has following benefits:
• Eliminates Health Hazards of Manual Spraying
• Reduces Water Usage by 90-95%
• Can improve Soil Health owing to reduced wastage of chemical falling on the ground
CONTACT
kisanmitr@indiancst.in
TOLL FREE
1800 258 2010
ONLINE HELP DESK
+91 97 429 79 111