VECROS Aims to Make Pilotless Drones With Greater Autonomy

Earlier this year when the Government of India announced a ban on importing Completely-Built-Up (CBU) and other variant drones, the indegenous drone manufacturing industry started adding value addition to the drone building in the country. Delhi-based drone tech startup VECROS is building drones with embedded cameras and CPUs to do away with the need of a pilot. In conversation with Mohammed Rayees ur Rahim of Sakshi Post, the founder of tech startup VECROS, Besta Prem Sai shared his inspiration for the pilotless drone project and discussed how drones are being used as Drone-as-a-Service (DaaS).

How did the idea click to start VECROS Tech at IIT Delhi? Tell us something about your journey and vision.

VECROS is simply abbreviated as VECtors based Robotic Operating System. Besta Prem Sai, has always been fascinated by the robots and possibilities out there for their applications. NASA has announced its plans to send drones to MARS back in 2018 but there were challenges like Non-GPS navigation that was very difficult to solve which is crucial for drones to fly on MARS. That’s what inspired him to jump into VECROS. He thought we can make similar technology in INDIA and one day send drones to MARS from India.

However During pandemic, there was a VIZAG steel plant disaster that killed so many people around it. We at VECROS thought the same technology that is helping drones fly on MARS can help save lives. That’s where our AI on edge system was born. with our system we were able to reduce 40% time in effective communications between different stakeholders for inspections.

With our vision to save lives in most hostile, difficult to access and remote areas using drones as an inspection tool is a difficult and challenging one. We were able to attract very big investors like 100xVC and very big clients that believed in our vision.

What kind of solutions do you provide to agriculture, construction, mining, and oil & gas industries?

We operate on a Hardware + Software model. Users can buy our drones at a fixed price and later install pieces of software to manage and do different activities using drones.

For agriculture, our drone can provide mapping of fields in minutes to conduct stand counts, identify variability, and make in-field recommendations, all offline at the field's edge.

For construction we save time, improve communication, and reduce cost by using aerial and ground data to perform surveys, conduct inspections, and document every job site. Bringing full site documentation into one solution, VECROS enables you to capture interior, exterior, ground, and aerial data. Through a digital twin of your job site and in-depth analysis, projects run on time, on budget, and safely.

for mining and oil industries, We measure stockpiles more often for a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. We also provide reports of the total quantity and value of materials on site. With VECROS cloud, user can maintain site awareness and ensure compliance in exploration, drilling, and well pad operations

What are the various products you offered? Please share in details.

Insight Enterprise :- Insight enterprise is a state of the art drone system with 360 degree obstacle avoidance and AI on edge system.

VECROS Cloud: - Vecros Cloud works on SAAS model with various services like VECROS Drive, VECROS Streaming, VECROS Fleet manager and VECROS Analysis. With these services you can store media, analyse it and manage a fleet of drones.

Tell us something about your funding plans. Have you received any funding after the pre-seed funding round?

We received around $15k funding from 100xVC and other angels who are our early believers.

We have a fund requirement for at least $1M which we intend to use for our product launch and sell at least 1000 drones by the end of this year.

What are your expansion plans? Where do you see VECROS in the next two years?

We are aiming to sell at least 1000 drones by the end of 2022. We are aggressively expanding our team and resources to help achieve our goal.

We are also in plans to establish manufacturing plant and R&D centre with help of IIT Delhi and DST to boost further state of the art technology in Drones

In the next two years we want to expand to international markets in the US and Europe. We want to export Made in India drones to the world.

Our target is to reach at least $2M in revenue by the end of 2025.

How has the year been since inception?

  Since inception, we have faced a lot of challenges which were quite unique and motivated us to achieve greater heights.

Anything else you want to highlight?

We built an entire operating system for drones called JETPIX from scratch with which users can control 1,000 drones at a time.