India@100: Govt creating demand for the drone industry, says Jyotiraditya Scindia

The Ministry of Civil Aviation has bet big on the drone industry by dragging it out of some draconian rules that had kept it grounded in India. But the simplified rules and ecosystem won’t suffice alone. The government is now creating demand and betting big on ‘drones as a service', Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Civil Aviation, while speaking at Business Today’s India@100 conclave at New Delhi, said. 

“The creation of demand for ‘drones as a service’ is across 12 line ministries of government of India. The Agriculture Department is pushing the use of pesticides, the Rural Development Department is  pushing the use of drones for Svamitva, which is a cadastral survey being done completely by drones. The mines ministry is looking at using drones for exploration of mines. The power ministry looking at inspection of transmission towers with drones as opposed to humans. That demand creation has also been done by the government," Scindia said.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation came up with a new drone policy in March last year. When minister Scindia took over in June-July, the ministry completely rebuilt the whole policy and did away with all the permissions, all the fees. Brought about industry friendly, consumer friendly policy within a span of close to about two months in August. And soon the Digital Sky map was launched with delineated red, yellow and green areas, within a span of 30 days of announcing the drone policy. 

“I had committed to a 30-day deadline. And mind you this is not an easy task. Why? Because you have to sit with all 36 state governments and union territories. You have to sit with all your Line Ministries in the center and understand from them what is strategic, what is non-strategic, what is the fly zone, what is a no fly zone, and we were able to do that within a period of 30 days for industry,” added Scindia. 

Within two months of the launch of the new rules, the drone industry was also supported the production linked incentive scheme. 

“We came out with a PLI for the industry that had a total revenue only about Rs 65 crores. we came out with an incentive policy over a three year period of Rs 120 crore for a nascent industry. And today I'm glad to report that 23 companies have been given recognition under the PLI policy and the turnover of those 23 companies has grown from a base of Rs 88 crore in August last year, based on the PLI scheme, to Rs 319 crore in a period of 12 months,” Scindia said. 

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