Garuda drone to deliver Swiggy groceries in Bengaluru

Chennai: The drones of startup Garuda Aerospace will soon start delivering grocery packages in Bengaluru for food and grocery player Bundl Technologies Pvt Ltd known by its brand Swiggy. The city-based Garuda Aerospace is a drone-as-a-service provider.

"This is a pilot project started by Swiggy. We plan to start the pilot during the first week of May," Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder & CEO, Garuda Aerospace, told IANS. According to him, the drones will carry grocery packs from the seller-run 'dark stores' and from a store to a common middle point - drone port- where the Swiggy delivery person will pick up the packet and deliver to the end customer. The common middle point is the responsibility of Swiggy and it will give the addresses, Jayaprakash said. Swiggy in a blog post 'Swiggy Bytes' had said the pilot will be done in two tranches, the first one in Bengaluru by Garuda Aerospace and in Delhi-NCR by Skyeair Mobility.

The second phase will be done soon after studying the learnings from the pilot by ANRA-TechEagle Consortia and Marut Dronetech Pvt Ltd. However, it is not known who will be liable for any public liability case and whether Swiggy has insisted the drone players take out a public liability insurance policy. In February this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had virtually inaugurated the drone manufacturing facilities of Garuda Aerospace at Manesar in Gurugram and in Chennai.