Marut's agri-drone AG 365 receives DGCA approvals

HYDERABAD: India's leading drone manufacturer "Marut Drones" received 'Type Certification' approvals from the Director General of Civil Aviation for their extensively tested and robustly designed multi-utility agricultural drone AG 365.

AG 365 is designed and developed for Indian conditions and can be used for multiple purposes giving a higher ROI to the user. It was extensively tested on more than 1.5 lakhs acres and was optimised to be used in agriculture. Further, extensive research was done to develop crop-specific drones in collaboration with many agriculture universities and research institutes.

Having been awarded the Type Certificate for AG 365 model, the drone is now eligible for Rs 10 lakh unsecured loans from the Agri-Infrastructure Fund at a minimal 5-6 percent interest. Further, a 50-100 percent subsidy can be availed from the Government of India. The made-in-India kisan drone - AG 365 has been developed particularly for agricultural purposes to reduce crop loss, lower agro-chemical usage, better yield and profits to the farmers.

In addition, Marut Drones was also accorded Remote Pilot Training Organisation (RPTO) approvals which enables training and capacity building of drone pilots focussed on safe agriculture operations, repair and maintenance. Marut Drones is tying up with major universities to enable drone pilots with highest quality training and with this, it sees a vision of development of 2 lakh drone entrepreneurs in the countryside.

DGCA certification is provided on the basis of quality checks and is issued after a rigorous testing process of unmanned aerial vehicles in various NABL accredited testing labs. This makes UAV go through a series of material, environmental, operational tests for safe, secured and reliable operations. The certification enables the Hyderabad-based firm to bring the users their agricultural drone technology which can revolutionise Indian Agriculture.

Over the past 3 years, AG 365 drone model was scientifically tested for development of crop specific SOPs for safe and reliable usage in agriculture. AG 365 is designed to be a multi utility drone catering to the various operations in agriculture from crop protection through spraying, direct seeding to replace the cumbersome and expensive transplantation process in Rice and also for rapid afforestation purposes.

Marut Drones Founder Prem Kumar Vislawath said, "Marut Drones has been taking steps inline with its vision of Advancing Agriculture. Manual spraying in agriculture has caused huge negative health impacts on operators. And a mindless repetition of these sprays is inhumane exposing the operator to chemicals and leading to cancers. With both type certification and RTPO approvals by DGCA, the manual inhumane operations can be easily performed by drone making it safe to the operator. This also creates new job opportunities in rural areas. A drone entrepreneur using this drone can earn anywhere between Rs.40000 to Rs.90000 enabling him to work at the comfort of his home making a positive impact on farmers".

Marut Drones Cofounder Suraj Peddi said " All the drones in the market can only be used for a single purpose like spraying pesticides in the farms. Understanding the ground reality of farmers, for better ROI and product experience we have built the first multi-purpose drone. Our AG 365 is similar to tractors and one can do more than just spraying by changing attachment. This will give better ROI to users and the drone can be used across years for different purposes in agriculture".