Swiggy can now soon deliver your food packages through drones!

Swiggy may soon start food delivery through drones. Trials have started for both its food and medical packages. Swiggy’s drone delivery partner ANRA Technologies has received final approval from the Ministry of Defense (MoD), Directorate General of Aviation (DGCA) and Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) to begin trials of drones to deliver food. ANRA Technologies has received approval for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. After extensive planning, air traffic control integration, and equipment preparation, ANRA launched its first flight on June 16. Over the next several weeks, the ANRA team will test BVLOS food and medical package delivery in Etah and Rupnagar districts in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, respectively.

Apart from partnering with Swiggy for food delivery, the integrated airspace management firm is also engaged in another similar project. For that, it has partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar and will focus on medical delivery.

Shilpa Dnyaneshwar, principal program manager at Swiggy, said that through this project the company aims to “put the long-range efficiency of drone technology to best use”. Dnyaneshwar further added, “It is natural to explore the latest methods available to ease and speed up the last mile journey and provide maximum benefits to our consumers.”

ANRA founder and CEO Amit Ganju said the motivating factor for him and his team comes from knowing that “our technology could soon help deliver food and medical packages to people in less populated areas.”

In a test flight video the ANRA team showed how the delivery is likely to take place. The approximately 3-minute video shows a drone picking up a small food package and flying for a certain distance before returning to the ground and delivering the package.

A few weeks ago, Google-backed delivery start-up Dunzo had announced that it is ready for drone delivery of medicines under the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project launched by the Telangana government in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. . The project aims to enable emergency medical delivery which may include COVID-19 vaccines and other essentials.
Dunzo is among the entities that were recently granted permission by the Central Government to conduct beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) experimental flights using drones.