Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) sounds alien, much like Batman's auto-pilot; but once you say Drones, it sounds so much cooler. And this is what Mughilan T R and Mrinal Pai have been making and working on since 2008. It all began during their college (R.V.College of Enginnering, Bangalore) team’s participation in SAE-Aero design competition when the duo met and realised their common interest.
Since then, all they have been doing is trying to come up with several kinds of Drones and making a significant impact on society. The official company Skylark Drones came into being in 2014.
"We built many drones ranging from fixed wing aircraft, multi-rotors, and micro-aerial vehicles”. Also, custom drones are built for a wide-variety of the businesses. These drones are user-specific, unlike other businesses which buy off the shelf drones for just aerial photography" says Mughilan, with a sense of little pride, for what they are doing and belief, for what they intent to doing coming years.
With Skylark's cutting edge STRAPDROP (Strategic Payload Drop) technology, they make sure the client gets what they need, wherever they need it, in any localized region. With on-board intelligence to provide dynamic adaptability, DROPBOTs are more capable than you think.
Their major breakthrough probably came when the team won the prestigious the NASA systems award for the best systems engineering used in development of drones in 2013, beating other 75 teams from worldwide. The competition involved breaking the problem statement in the logical statement, use of appropriate design techniques and analysis, cost estimation of the project and other things.
"The company offers a complete aerial solution for various terrestrial applications. Equipped with a high definition camera and controlled using a ground station computer, our drones fly over a pre-defined pattern to generate 3D model of land surfaces, which can be used for land surveying (GIS), and in turn, helps to generate more revenues for Real Estate business. Other major domains that we work in are advertising or like what we call it, Dronevertising, which is an ideal way to publicize brands in events, malls or any other indoor or outdoor locations" says Mrinal.
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A Drone used for advertising[/caption]They are boot-strapped and raised seed funding by conducting workshops in various schools and colleges; and because Drones have always been a hot topic to discuss, it wasn't very difficult for the team to get noticed.
Mughilan, on questioning about some self-doubts that crept in, says “Plenty of times I had this question whether I and our team are doing it the right way. Discussing the possible outcomes of any problem with our team brought us closer and our thought process has evolved quite a bit since the time we started”.
Currently at a technological disruption phase, they are planning to expand globally. "We believe if we have the right product and the plan – We can scale globally into many of our markets. Also, the company is in talks with many multi-national companies for a possible partnership" Mrinal added.
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Skylark Drones Co-Founders - Mrinal Pai and Mughilan T R (L-R)[/caption]Skylark Drones have a team of 17 interns and 3 full time techies based out of Bangalore. They have different teams working in divisions such as sales & marketing, drone operations, post production, research & development etc. Ashish Goel, CEO of Urban Ladder; Vineeth V , Head of IoT in Chennai and P.S.Rao, Former Director of Nishant UAV project are some of the prominent mentors of this enthusiastic team.
One of the most awaited technology start-ups in 2015; Skylark Drones may have to face strict government regulations over security issues. And only time will tell how this upbeat idea unfolds.
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