Marut Drones: Engineering utility into every take-off
Marut Drones began with dengue control and ended up building aerial tractors and a training network. Its founders describe how the company found its market.
From mosquitoes to agriculture
We were trying to solve a problem. At Marut, we were trying to identify the problem statement around dengue and malaria, and we were using drones to eradicate them. Eventually we moved into agriculture, because there is a lot of manual labour involved, pesticide usage is unsafe, and traditional practices were ineffective. There is also a growing shortage of labour and low adoption of protective agricultural technologies.
The major thought was whether we could make drones accessible, helpful and affordable for the farming community. At the start we did not directly manufacture drones — we were focused on building the technology. Over time we started building the drones ourselves. Today we have created an ecosystem where we train people, identify rural agri-entrepreneurs, provide them with drones, and they offer services directly to end farmers.
Why not stay with public health
Dengue and malaria are more of a government-centric use case. We wanted a scalable use case with less government intervention, which is why we chose agriculture.
In agriculture, many people in the farming community face health issues like cancer, and the younger crowd is moving away from farming. So we thought about building technology that the 20-30 age group could use to stay engaged in farming and support end farmers. That was the thought process.
Aerial tractors, and three other product lines
Today we work primarily in agriculture. These drones function like tractors — essentially aerial tractors. They can be used for transplantation, seeding, spraying, crop monitoring and pollination: six different applications from one drone, which is what enables year-round usage. That is our first product.
The second is a drone for afforestation, where we carry out planting in deforested areas. Next are logistics drones that can carry up to 100 kg, used for medical deliveries such as blood and vaccines as well as cargo. These are point-to-point deliveries, not last-mile. We also have surveillance drones used by industrial areas, police and corporate customers.
The economics of multi-utility
If you look at other drones in the market, most are designed for one application only. A spraying drone, for example, is useful for a maximum of 150 days in a year. We have built drones that can be used for 365 days across multiple use cases.
Because of that, the entrepreneur or individual purchasing our drone achieves return on investment in less than six months, compared with nearly two years for other drones. We also build technology that does not require users to understand the science behind it. They just need to click — the drone software handles the entire operation.
Defence work
We mainly provide drones for tactical surveillance and delivery purposes, and we extensively support defence organisations and PSUs. From a warfare perspective, our drones are used for logistics delivery, surveillance and tactical operations.
Seven academies, and the plan for one per state
The thought process was simple: new technology requires new skills, and these skills can be acquired in less than a week. Unlike earlier times when courses took six months or a year, drone skills can be learned quickly.
While building this technology we noticed a shortage of skilled people. There was aspiration — everyone wanted to use drones — but very few knew how to operate or repair them, especially for use cases like delivery or surveillance. We identified that gap and started our first academy in 2021.
Similar to a driving licence system, we provide DGCA licences, since a licence is mandatory in India to fly drones. We currently have academies in Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and we are expanding into Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh — seven academies at present. Our aim is to eventually have one in every state, and to bring rural youth into the industry by training them to fly, repair, develop and maintain drones for various applications.