Seven IITians with their very own UAVs catch the Army Chief’s eye
General Deepak Kapoor at the Defence Expo
NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 17: When a group of fresh IIT graduates team up with one of the largest Indian business conglomerates to foray into the booming Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) market, even the Army Chief has to sit up and take notice. During his stroll around the CII-organised Defence Expo on Sunday, General Deepak Kapoor was smitten by a set of mini-UAVs developed indigenously by a group of seven IIT Kanpur graduates.
Clearly impressed by the small, hand launched UAVs — designed to be carried by an infantry soldier for tactical reconnaissance in the battlefield — the General has invited them for flight demonstration and trials.
While purchases may be a long way off — the Army is expected to shortly float a global tender for mini-UAVs in the same class for the infantry — the invitation is a major achievement for a product that was conceptualised by the students during college.
“We were friends in IIT, working on various projects when we decided to do something out of the ordinary. Some work (on UAVs) had been done in IIT during personal projects and after graduating, we decided to get together,” says Raman Puri, CEO of Aurora Integrated Systems (AIS), the company floated by the graduates.
The two UAVs designed by the company and unveiled at Defence Expo that caught the Army Chief’s eye are the Sky i Mk 1, a man portable 2.8 kg UAV fitted with cameras and infra red sensors and the Altius, a larger UAV with an endurance of 10 hours for battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance. While the two UAVs match similar products available around the world, where the company is hoping to score is the promise of indigenous technology and the scope of a cheaper military solution due to domestic production. “Our system is totally indigenous and we have home grown technology without any foreign assistance. The cost of the UAV would also be significantly lesser as we are a small company and the cost of development was not too much,” Puri says. The project kicked off on a small scale in 2006 but the current UAV projects took off in earnest last year after the TATA group bought an equity stake in the startup company. Funding apart, the upcoming defence giant brought in expertise like composite materials technology and marketing skills. While the flight demonstration for the Army is a good start, the company expects a growing UAV market for paramilitary forces like CRPF and BSF in counter insurgency roles as well as state police forces in riot control and anti-Naxal operations.
