Even as Amazon made its first successful drone delivery to a British man, Bengaluru-based Indian software giant, Infosys is looking to push the domestic drone start-up industry. Infosys has reportedly backed a drone start-up called ideaForge, which was founded by three IIT-Bombay alumni.
The Mumbai-based start-up has received an undisclosed amount of investment from Infosys. The company was founded in 2007 by Ankit Mehta, Rahul Singh, and Ashish Bhat. The company has been working with Indian Armed Forces for developing surveillance, crowd monitoring and rescue operations.
The company works on research, development and production of compact unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
IdeaForge's flagship product is the NETRA UAV, a man-portable unmanned aerial vehicle. It can be launched from anywhere and can fly up to 400m height. The UAV can send continuous real time video of people, vehicles and their movement on the ground. It can cover a circle of 8km diameter. It can fly up to 4km distance from its take-off point. NETRA was developed in collaboration with India's Defense Research Development Organisation (DRDO). The UAV can be used for counter-insurgency, border management, hostage situations, disaster management or simply crowd control.
The company also offers solutions for commercial applications in areas like energy, utilities, telecom, and agriculture.
Though rules and regulations in India do not allow private organisations and individuals to fly drones, specific permissions need to be taken for testing. The Armed Forces however, use drones made domestically and bought Israeli drones for medium-altitude long-endurance missions.
Infosys launched a $500 million Innovation Fund in 2015. The fund backs start-ups that are relevant to Infosys' core business.
The Infosys stock closed at Rs 993.25 on Thursday, down 0.58 percent from its previous close on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
