For the pilots, Swiggy has chosen Garuda Aerospace, Skyeair Mobility, the consortium between ANRA Technologies and TechEagle, and Marut Dronetech.
Swiggy, an online food delivery firm, has announced that it would begin testing the use of drones for its Instamart quick grocery service in May. Drones will be used to replace goods between dark storefronts, from the seller’s position to the common point closest to the customer’s delivery address, completing what the business refers to as the middle-delivery layer. A dark shop is a tiny fulfilment centre that enables ultra-rapid delivery.
Swiggy stated in a blog post that the last deliveries will be done by its onground fleet. Bengalore and Delhi NCR are set to host the first pilots (national capital region).
“The goal of the pilot is to see if drones can be used in the middle mile, namely for Swiggy’s grocery delivery service Instamart.” Drones will be utilised to restock merchandise between seller-run dark stores and from one store to another. The business added in the weblog that “a delivery partner would then pick up purchases from the common location and deliver them to the customer’s doorstep.”
For the pilots, Swiggy has chosen Garuda Aerospace, Skyeair Mobility, the consortium between ANRA Technologies and TechEagle, and Marut Dronetech.
The pilots will begin immediately with Garuda Aerospace in Bengaluru and Skyeair Mobility in Delhi and NCR.
After gathering the learnings from the first tranche, the ANRA and TechEagle consortia, along with Marut Dronetech, will begin working on the plots in the second tranche. On June 16, 2021, ETtech reported that a partnership led by ANRA Technologies, of which Swiggy is a member, has won government approval to begin drone experiments for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations in India.
With Garuda Aerospace and Skyeair Mobility, the pilot will begin in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR. Expansion in the region and beyond will be based on the progress.
“This is a thrilling and difficult adventure. Swiggy said on its blog, “We look forward to working with our partners and using the insights from these pilots as a stepping stone in discovering opportunities for drone-assisted delivery in the e-commerce market.”
Swiggy said it got 345 registrations for its request for proposal (RFP) for the drone delivery service as part of the process.
“We finalised the award of the RFP after a thorough examination process that included legal, financial, and technical rounds… “We’ve finalised four providers in two tranches that have a mix of drone hardware capabilities, scaling potential, investment in innovation, R&D, and overall capacity to execute the service,” Swiggy continued.