Agriculture drone developed by sister-brother duo’s start-up gets DGCA certification

Devika & Devan Chandrasekaran, engineering grads, developed agri-drone, FIA QD10, to increase yield & reduce fertiliser application. It has 25 min flight time & costs Rs. 4-7.5 lakh. They are upskilling manual labourers into drone operators & plan to roll out operations in UK & Germany.

Devika Chandrasekaran and her younger brother Devan Chandrasekaran from Cherthala in Alappuzha, both engineering graduates, ventured into agriculture drone engineering in 2020 after their mother, who used to cultivate paddy on 10 acres of leased land, suffered multiple yield losses following the 2018 Kerala floods.

Three years later, FIA QD10, an agriculture drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Fuselage Innovations, an agri-tech firm founded by the duo at Maker Village near Kochi, has received ‘Type certification’ from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

“Our initial efforts were to use satellite data to increase productivity. But it did not produce the desired result. Using drones for foliar application of micronutrients and so on, we found that productivity increased significantly. We developed the final version of FIA drone after testing and piloting over 50,000 hectares of farmland in south India. We aimed to develop an agriculture drone affordable to Indian farmers and we are happy to be part of a very small number of companies to manufacture one under the Make in India Initiative,” says Devan, managing director of Fuselage Innovations.

The FIA drones integrated with indigenous NaviC technology have a capacity of 10 litres and spray with precision. Early research has found that the drone could reduce fertilizer application by 70% (by bringing down wastage) while helping to increase yield by 30%. It has a flight time of 25 minutes as per the civil aviation testing. “This is something only foreign drone manufacturing companies can lay claim to. While these drones generally cost more than ₹10 lakh in the Indian market, we are selling FIA drones between ₹4 lakh and ₹7.5 lakh depending on the use of customised accessories,” says Ms. Devika, director (operations) of Fuselage Innovations, adding that it can spray fertilizer, nutrients, bio-pesticides and so on in three acres in one go.

Farmers in Kerala are already deploying sprayer drones for aerial application of micronutrients and biopesticides to rice, tea, pineapple and other plants. As the drones are taking over plant spraying, it will affect the few manual labourers who carry out this task otherwise. To address their concern, the agri-tech firm has initiated a plan to upskill these manual spraying labourers into drone operators.

The start-up firm has also developed the technology to understand the health of plants with the help of surveillance drones and prescribe suitable bio-pesticides. They are in the process of setting up an office in Canada and are planning to roll out its operations in the U.K. and Germany in the coming months.