Blanket ban on imports of drones may disrupt industry
Premium- Ban will increase costs for service providers dependent on imported drones for aerial mapping
The blanket ban on the import of finished foreign drones is likely to disrupt the drone industry in India, impacting a majority of service providers who are dependent on imported drones for aerial mapping, industrial monitoring, and cinematography, besides increasing their cost burden.
The government’s decision will lead to “a lot of disruption" in terms of business and “derail a lot of well-laid plans" as 90% of the service providers in India are using imported drones, said Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy, chief executive and co-founder of drone software services firm Skylark Drones.
The Centre should have offered some incentives to the industry to override the ban, as India does not have the manufacturing capacity to cut dependence on imports, he added.
Karan Kamdar, chief executive officer, 1 Martian Way Industries Pvt. Ltd, which develops software and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) products that power drones, concurred.
“Many people are accustomed to imported drones and their ease of use. Many foreign brands specially make drones for agricultural use, and that would have helped with the government’s kisan drone initiatives, announced in the Union budget. These, too, will now be restricted. It is not as simple as banning an app. This sector is hardware dependent," he added.
Besides, the Centre has also banned semi-knocked down (SKD) and completely knocked down (CKD) drone imports. Only components can be sourced separately by drone manufacturers from their respective suppliers.
Though India has announced a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme with an outlay of ₹120 crore for drones and drone components to encourage local manufacturing, experts said drone assembly is in very early stages, unlike smartphones or IT hardware.
India does not have the supply chain for local manufacturing of drones, Ramasamy said. “We don’t have locally produced batteries or motors or the capability to produce autopilot electronics at scale," he added.
Furthermore, it will also increase the cost burden on companies as imported drones are cheaper than locally assembled ones—a problem faced by mobile phone manufacturers in the initial stages of the Make in India programme.
A high-end drone used for industrial purposes can cost close to ₹1 lakh, while locally manufactured drones can cost up to ₹4-6 lakh, Ramasamy said.
“For the drone ecosystem to flourish and for innovative new use cases to emerge, access to high-quality and economically priced drone hardware is critical."
Both Kamdar and Ramasamy, however, said the ban would encourage drone manufacturing in India despite the immediate concerns.
Smit Shah, president of the Drone Federation of India, said Indian manufacturers have already supplied drones assembled here for commercial operations, surveillance, agriculture spraying, and healthcare delivery, besides for the use of the armed forces. “If you are assembling a drone with 20 components and you import 15 components and assemble it in India, your indigenization content is very low. But the fact that you are importing components from 15 vendors and integrating them gives you control and understanding of the technology. Later, if you want to indigenize five of them, you will have the know-how to do it," Shah added.
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