Several e-commerce companies have been pitching to introduce a drone-based delivery platform, food delivery firm Zomato has even tested a payload delivery from a hybrid drone.
Researchers, however, believe drone-based aerial deliveries is unrealistic in packed Indian suburbs, despite the demand for such functionality sky-rocketing in the e-commerce space, media reported on Monday.
The ability to meet the soaring demands of drone-based deliveries for everyday items is currently very low and financial constraints also play a role.
Experts from the Canadian University of Waterloo analysed differences that might arise between initial investments, the deployment of drones, the landing of the unmanned devices, and revenue extracted from aerial deliveries under possible circumstances like technological limitations, preference of drone deliveries by customers and regulatory restrictions, the report said.
The study comes at a time when Indian bodies are dealing with the development of advanced technologies and exploring ways to develop drone-based solutions for everyday issues in the country.
The Drone Federation of India (DFI) signed a memorandum of understanding with Amazon Web Services in early January, entitling the American company to drive the innovation and development of the drone-ecosystem in India.
Against the backdrop of recent drone attacks in Saudi Arabia, the otherwise multi-functional technology has come under scrutiny in India.
India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) announced a regulatory mechanism for operators of drones and made mandatory identification and voluntary disclosure of civil drones in the country earlier in January to tackle potential threats to national security.
According to an advisory by MoCA, both drones and their operators are required to obtain a Unique Identification Number (UIN) and Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) among other formalities.
In October 2019, a spokesperson from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) revealed that the number of illegal drones in India was between 50,000 and 60,000.
Recently, India’s Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri confirmed that the nation is gearing up to conduct tests of drone-system based flights called ''Beyond Visual Line of Sight'' (BVLOS) in a bid to facilitate last-mile air delivery.
Drone-technology is currently used in around 300 areas across India, including railways, roadways, and geographic information systems (GIS).
Earlier in December, just after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet approved the “Personal Data Protection Bill” to classify data as personal, sensitive, or critical for India and its citizens, AWS came forward to help the Indian government safeguard confidential information.