An evening with Prem Kumar Vislawath |IFHE|Webinar

An evening with Prem Kumar Vislawath, Founder & Chief Innovator at Marut Drones

Introduction

On January 14, 2022, we had a very interesting session by Prem Kumar Vislawath, Founder & Chief Innovator at Marut Drones. Prem explained how his company is designing and deploying customized drones to solve some important social problems: mosquito eradication, afforestation, delivery of medicines and vaccines in remote areas, spraying pesticides in farms, etc. Marut has won several awards and recognitions for its pioneering work in the area of drones. Listed under Forbes’ The 30 Under 30 2020 Asia, Marut has also won Facebook’s India Innovation Accelerator Program 2019 in AI for Social Good and Purdue University’s Shah Family Global Innovation Lab’s seed grant. Recently, Marut came into the limelight when its drones flew for some 40 minutes over 42 km, the longest drone flight ever undertaken.

Prem and his team have been completely focused on solving social problems. Profits have always been a byproduct. Thanks to their expertise and passion, there is no dearth of customers and investors, and the company is scaling up rapidly in this exciting space.

Prem’s journey

Hailing from a small town in Telangana, Prem was not new to the problem of mosquitoes in India. Hyderabad’s lakes were being used to dump garbage and sewage water, converting them into breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Prem approached the local authorities, but their response disappointed him.

Prem was connected to the IICT (Indian Institute of Chemical Technology) by Prof Ajit Rangnekar, former Dean of ISB. But when Prem met them, the scientists at IICT started laughing at him. Prem gathered that IICT had been set up as a Malaria lab during the time of the Nizam. The IICT scientists had developed various simulations but none of them had proved effective in dealing with the mosquito menace. Prem resolved to do something about the problem. As he worked with GHMC, he realized that there were hardly any entomologists (experts in insects) left in the country. The few who were working with GHMC were doing administrative rather than technical work.

To combat the risk of vector-borne diseases, Prem, along with his IIT Guwahati batch-mates Saikumar Chinthala and Suraj Peddi, founded Marut. The founders realized they were dealing with a science problem. They studied mosquitos, the various types, the diseases they caused, their breeding potential, etc. For example, they understood that the mosquitos which bite us in the evenings are females while those which breed in the water bodies are larvae. Later, they approached the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to help increase the coverage of its mosquito eradication operations. Thanks to the Marut drones, dengue cases have come down from 24,000 to 600 and Malaria cases from 18,000 to 400 over the past 3 years in Hyderabad. Marut has adopted 180 lakes in the Musi zone.

Prem and his team started with an undisclosed seed funding that they received from Kiran Darisi and Parsuram Vijaysankar, the co-founders of Freshworks. The Marut founders who had been working on the initiative since 2017 registered the company in 2019. Since then, the company has grown smartly. Marut has tied up with various partners and tapped their expertise. Working with the Public Health Foundation of India, Marut has pricked up insights on how to store medicines during transit. For example, different medicines must be kept not in one box but in different boxes maintained at different temperatures. Prem believes that Hyderabad has a good ecosystem. IIIT and Apollo Hospitals have been very supportive towards Marut.

Covid has accelerated the adoption of drones. Earlier, there was reluctance to allow drones to fly. But during the pandemic, the need for remote, contactless and automated operations made the government appreciate the utility of drones. The locust attacks during the summer of 2020 also made drone technology more appealing.

Drones are also creating meaningful employment opportunities. A drone operator can easily make Rs 50,000 per month. In the villages, drone service providers can earn Rs 10-15,000 per day or Rs 200,000 – 300,000 per month by providing spraying services to farms.

Hyderabad is emerging as a hub for drone operations. The use cases developed in Hyderabad are being replicated in other parts of the country and indeed across the world.

As part of its efforts to develop the drone ecosystem, Marut has developed a curriculum for school students (Class 6-10) to help them learn how to assemble drones.

To this day, Prem remains in touch with customers. He believes that only by talking to them, Marut will be able to move in the right direction.

Using drones to solve social problems

Mosquito eradication

Mosquito-borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika etc are posing a major health challenge in India, resulting in millions of deaths every year. Marut Zap (MARUT ZAP), is India's first commercially available mosquito eradication and disease prediction system. It is a comprehensive solution involving mosquito surveillance, effective interventions, and vibrant awareness campaigns. The solution helps local authorities with potential disease outbreaks and take the necessary precautions. Moreover, manual intervention is minimized, avoiding the need for workers to handle harmful chemicals. The platform uses an IoT sensor to create mosquito maps by location, gender, species, and subspecies. It offers real-time reports to identify high and low-risk areas for diseases like malaria, dengue, and chikungunya. It issues critical alerts during emergency situations and disease outbreaks, facilitating intervention programs. The algorithms were developed by Marut painstakingly over a period of 3 years.

Marut caters to three kinds of customers:

Municipalities: Here the work is typically awarded through tenders.

Large campuses: Marut works with companies and institutions like Infosys, Wipro and ISB to help them deal with the mosquito menace.

Large gated communities: These communities keep their premises clean but mosquitos can still come from the nearby areas which are not so clean. Marut has developed solutions for these communities.

Afforestation

Marut’s ‘seedcopter’ program is an aerial seeding solution for rapid and scalable reforestation. The process begins with a field survey and mapping of the terrain and demarcation of the areas that need urgent attention. Based on the soil, climate, and other parameters, the number and species of trees that can be planted is determined.

Marut has partnered with the Telangana government for its ‘Hara Bahara’ campaign. The programme aims to plant 50 lakh seeds on 12,000 hectares across all 33 districts of the state.

Delivery of medicines

On April 30, 2021, Marut rolled out Hepicopter, to deliver Covid-19 vaccines and other medical supplies in the Vikarabad district of Telangana. The drones serve 15 public health centers (PHCs) in and around 30 kilometers of the district. The drones are operated from the central hub in the district hospital, where messages are booked. Then, the coordinates are fed into the systems, the drones take off and the medicines are picked up at the drop-off point. Similar efforts have been launched in Assam, where it can sometimes take 5 hours to cross the Brahmaputra and deliver medicines. With drones, it can be done in 30 minutes.

About drones and their uses

A drone consists of components like motors, frames, avionics, battery and propellers. Assembling a drone is relatively easy provided the components are available.

A drone contains a satellite map and using the map, it can go to a specific location to accomplish a specific activity. For example, drones can do volumetric analysis and stockpile estimation in mining, maintain power transmission lines or inspect oil and gas pipelines. Drones can be sent to the war zones to identify mines and detonate them then and there. Drones can be used to do surveys before the architects prepare the design for real estate projects. Drones can help the police to arrive at a crime spot quickly and apprehend criminals. Drones are being used by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams to plant trees on Tirumala with financial support from devotees.

Various digital technologies can complement drones and make them more powerful:

GPS location and Geographic Information System (GIS) applications can create fully or semi-autonomous paths for the drones.
AI Computer Vision can be used to build and iterate models for object and image identification.
Predictive Analytics can generate actionable insights. For example, weather data can be used to identify hotspots of wildfires and send drones to inspect the area.
Edge Computing can help design a fully autonomous vehicle that avoids birds or another drone mid-flight.
Cloud Platforms can provide the storage and processing power required to handle large volumes of high-quality photos and videos.

Putting it all together

There are three parts to Marut’s solution:

Custom built drones: Based on the application, the drones are designed and manufactured. The payloads can range from 5 kg to 200 kg and the flying range can vary from less than a kilometer to many kilometers. Marut has already assembled more than 80 drones. A drone consists of components like motors, frames, avionics, battery and propellers. Assembling a drone is relatively easy but the components should be available. India unfortunately does not make many of the components. The Chinese are far ahead of us in this regard.
Autonomous technology: The drones can operate and do the tasks given to them without the need for human effort. In case of mosquito eradication, the water hyacinths can be removed, and the spraying done in less than a day compared to 5 weeks earlier at 2% of the cost.
Network: Several drones can be pressed into service and the operations scaled up, based on the requirement. The entire coordination can be done remotely.

Funding and scaling up

For Marut, funding has not been a problem. When Prem started the firm, he needed about Rs 1 crore for the hardware and the technology and the operations. Fortunately, he was able to mobilize the required funds. Prem recalls that the first seed investors (Kiran Darisi and Parsuram Vijaysankar, the co-founders of Freshworks) after listening to their pitch, did not even take 10 minutes to write the cheque. This money along with grants received from institutions such as Purdue have helped the company to sustain and grow its operations.

Today, there is no dearth of investors today for Marut. Every week, the company receives proposal from investors. To scale up the business, Prem estimates he needs about $ 250 mn. Prem is in touch with NGOs like the Gates Foundation to adopt cities just like it has been done in Africa.

Regulations

Regulations regarding drones were vague and ambiguous till recently. But after the new Civil Aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia took charge, things have improved a lot. The entire country has been divided into red, yellow and green zones:

Red zone: within 5 kilometers of the airport. Permission is required to fly drones in this zone.

Yellow Zone: within 5-8 kilometers of airports. A no objection certificate is needed to fly drones.

Green Zone: More than 8 km from airports. No permission is required for flying drones up to 400 feet. With 90% of the country’s area falling within the green zone, corporates are now using drones extensively. The Quality Council of India now deals with applications and responds within 24-48 hours. The prime minister himself is a great proponent of drones. One of his pet initiatives, Samvita is using drones to deal with the problem of mapping the area, unifying land records and providing a single version of the truth for land registration.

On DJI

DJI of China is the leading drone manufacturer in the world. It has been around for more than 15 years. Well-funded, its turnover is now $ 21 bn. It is a leader in cost and technology. DJI’s products are popular even in India, especially for weddings. Even our military has been using DJI drones. Thanks to DJI, the Chinese can wage a war on India with the help of drones very effectively. It is important for us to build our own drone capabilities. As mentioned earlier, India does not make any of the components. We have been happy to import components and assemble them. Under the new PLI scheme, indigenous drone manufacturing is being encouraged.

Concluding notes

Prem believes that the drone opportunity is huge. Some 10,000 drones are required only to cover the Rythu vedikas in Telangana. As drones begin to travel longer distances, the applications will further increase. Air taxis will be a reality in a couple of years. Instead of sitting in front of screens, Prem feels drones give young people a chance to work on real problems the world faces. Students should start taking more interest in drones and tap the exciting career opportunities which are emerging in this space.

We thank Dr. Vedpuriswar for bringing out the highlights in the form of this note