Adani Defence and Aerospace has entered into definitive agreements for acquiring 50 per cent equity stake in agricultural drone startup General Aeronautics.
General Aeronautics, a Bangalore based startup specializes in developing robotic drones to offer tech enabled crop protection services, crop health monitoring, precision farming and yield monitoring using artificial intelligence and data analytics while working very closely with the farmers and agricultural chemical companies. General Aeronautics also has the presence of some reputed venture capital firms like Mela Ventures, founded by former Mindtree founders.
“The cross-industry application of drones is nearly limitless and continues to make great strides. It offers countries like ours the opportunity to leapfrog generations of infrastructure, healthcare, logistics, agriculture and defence advancements and break several process barriers. When combined with next generation imaging technologies, longer battery life, edge based artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, the possibilities are endless. The partnership between General Aeronautics and Adani Defence & Aerospace fuses our military and civilian objectives by integrating several capabilities Adani Group’s military UAV capabilities with the capabilities of General Aeronautics thereby providing us with a platform with far reaching possibilities,” said Ashish Rajvanshi, CEO, Adani Defence and Aerospace.
Rajvanshi added, “India has taken a lead to establish several forward-looking policies under the guidance of the Hon’ble Prime Minister and we expect to immediately be able to leverage this partnership to help serve our nations’ defence, industrial development and social goals.”
The acquisition aligns to the objectives of Adani Defence & Aerospace in providing a platform to startups and MSMEs for rapid growth and scalability of innovative technologies.
“I am delighted that Adani Defence and Aerospace is partnering with us to lead us into the next era of growth in this rapidly evolving space. I look forward to our partnership unlocking substantial scale, leveraging their vision and commitment to the unmanned capabilities which will help facilitate India becoming the drone hub of the world,” said Abhishek Burman, CEO, General Aeronautics.
The drone and drone services market in India is expected to grow rapidly and can reach INR 30,000 crores by 2026 driven by the evolving policy framework, PLI incentives and the recent ban on imports of drones.
