Exclusive: Ecom Express To Pilot Drone Deliveries In Delhi NCR

Delhi NCR-based Ecom Express has become the latest Indian logistics company looking to leverage drones for faster deliveries. The Warburg Pincus-backed startup will begin a drone delivery pilot this week in the Delhi NCR-region, Ecom Express COO Vishwachetan Nadamani told Inc42.

The startup plans to expand the pilot in a staged manner. After Delhi, it will be launched in Bengaluru, and later in parts of Chandigarh.

Ecom Express has partnered drone startup Skye Air for the pilot. 

Responding to a question about the type of packages that would be delivered via drones, Nadamani said, “At this point we expect beauty products, personal care products, and medicines to be the categories which will see drone delivery.”

How Drone Deliveries Will Work

Explaining the procedure for drone deliveries, Nadamani said that the packages will be delivered to Skye Air’s mother pod during Ecom Express’s milk run in a particular area. 

For the uninitiated, a milk run is a daily fixed route taken by a logistics company to pick and drop packages. 

From there, drones, which can carry a weight of up to 5 kg, will carry the packages to the delivery pod zone — located within a radius of 500 metres to 1 km from the recipients’ addresses. Delivery executives of Skye Air will then deliver the packages to the customers either on foot or bicycle.

The routes for the pilot will be decided based on the number of shipments in the area and the drone startup’s coverage. 

“Firstly, the area has to have a decent shipment density and secondly the route must fall under Skye Air’s coverage. Whichever shipment they can fly, we will give it to them,” Nadamani said. 

Ecom Express plans to start drone deliveries with 500 shipments per day for the first two weeks, and then increase it to 2,000 shipments per day. 

The startup, founded in 2012, claims to deliver packages to 27,000 pin codes in 2,700 cities and towns across the country.

The Drone Race In India’s Logistics Market

As per the partnership agreement, Ecom Express will be paying a per delivery fee to Skye Air for the pilot. However, Nadamani said that drone deliveries have the potential to make shipping faster, help logistics companies earn extra revenue, and improve their ESG scores by reducing their carbon footprint.

“We are looking forward to a lakh shipments in drone delivery. At that scale, it will have an impact on the cost side, reduce carbon footprint, add safety net, and beat traffic. This is better than the traditional logistics,” he added. 

The development comes at a time when a number of logistics companies are adopting drone deliveries to reduce the time taken to deliver shipments.

Late last year, Shiprocket also partnered with Skye Air for drone deliveries around Gurugram. 

Founded in 2019 by Ankit Kumar, Swapnik Jakkampudi and Chandra Prakash, Skye Air is backed by LetsVenture, Chiratae Ventures, and Agility Ventures. Earlier this year, the startup bagged contracts from 10 government medical institutions to deploy its drone mobility solutions.

Earlier this month, listed logistics startup Delhivery also said that it is setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary to manufacture drones and provide freight air transportation services. 

At the heart of all these is the burgeoning drone market of India. As per an Inc42 report, the Indian drone market is expected to reach a size of $13 Bn by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 21% between 2022 and 2030. Two drone startups – DroneAcharya and ideaForge – also went public in the last couple of years.