Adani Defence and Aerospace has acquired a 50 per cent equity stake in agricultural drone startup General Aeronautics.
General Aeronautics is an end-to-end agri platform solution provider, based out of Bengaluru, India and incorporated in 2016.
It provides robotic drones and drone-based solutions for crop protection services, crop health, precision- farming and yield monitoring using artificial intelligence and analytics for the agricultural sector.
General Aeronautics also has the presence of some reputed venture capital firms like Mela Ventures, founded by former Mindtree founders.
“The cross-industry application of drones is nearly limitless and continues to make great strides. It offers countries like ours the opportunity to leapfrog generations of infrastructure, healthcare, logistics, agriculture and defence advancements and break several process barriers. When combined with next-generation imaging technologies, longer battery life, edge-based artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, the possibilities are endless,” said Ashish Rajvanshi, CEO, Adani Defence and Aerospace.
He further added that the partnership between General Aeronautics and Adani Defence & Aerospace fuses our military and civilian objectives by integrating several Adani Group’s military UAV capabilities with the capabilities of General Aeronautics thereby providing us with a platform with far-reaching possibilities.
“India has taken a lead to establish several forward-looking policies under the guidance of the Prime Minister and we expect to immediately be able to leverage this partnership to help serve our nations’ defence, industrial development and social goals,” said Rajvanshi.
The acquisition aligns with the objectives of Adani Defence & Aerospace in providing a platform to startups and MSMEs for rapid growth and scalability of innovative technologies.
Adani Defence Systems Technologies Limited shall leverage its military drone and Al / ML capabilities and work with General Aeronautics for providing end to end solutions for the domestic agricultural sector, the company said in a Stock Exchange filing.
Usage of drones will increase adoption of Edge computing, in addition to 5G and IoT, industry watchers opine.
“I am delighted that Adani Defence and Aerospace is partnering with us to lead us into the next era of growth in this rapidly evolving space. I look forward to our partnership unlocking substantial scale, leveraging their vision and commitment to the unmanned capabilities which will help facilitate India becoming the drone hub of the world,” said Abhishek Burman, CEO, General Aeronautics.
The drone and drone services market in India is expected to grow rapidly and can reach INR 30,000 crores by 2026 driven by the evolving policy framework, PLI incentives and the recent ban on imports of drones.
