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Republic Day 2022: How a Fruit-basket Maker Helped IIT-Delhi Start-up Light The Delhi Sky

In a first-of-its-kind event, 1000 drones were used by the Ministry of Defence to stage a 3D animation show in the sky, marking the end of this year’s Republic Day celebrations at Rajpath. At the heart of this show was BotLab Dynamics, a tech start-up founded by two IIT Delhi alumni and friends - Tanmay Bhunkar and Anuj Kumar Barnwal. At a time when there was a shortage of supplies globally, BotLab Dynamics had to look for suppliers in the Indian market.

That’s when they came across a fruit-basket maker from Seelampur in Delhi and asked him to design the outer casing of the drones. In fact, 80% of the components in the drones were made in India, including the semi-conductor chips that were manufactured by a mobile chip maker from Manesar.

A Journey in Advanced Technology

What culminated during the ‘Beating the Retreat’ ceremony, began way back in 2019 when BotLabs Dynamics started experimenting with Swarm Development technology for the first time. In the same year, the company demonstrated a swarm of 10 drones to the Chief of Army at AirTech.

It paved the way for more demonstrations and BotLabs dynamics slowly started getting public attention. The real breakthrough happened after the Indian startup was awarded the Prime Minster’s award and an iDEX grant of 1.5 Crore for Research and Development.

Image source: Press Information Bureau

In July 2021, when the technology-driven startup was asked by the Ministry of Defence to conduct a drone show at Rajpath, they only had the capacity to handle up to 80 drones simultaneously. Taking that number to 1000 was a huge step-up, and they didn’t even have 1000 people to handle each drone and carry out a flight check.

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Overcoming challenges

In the absence of sufficient manpower, they decided to manufacture and test the drones on their own. However, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the supply chain for various parts came to a standstill, and there was a shortage of crucial supplies like semiconductor chips.

When the drones were ready, the company realized that 80% of the components in them were made in India, including important parts like flight controllers, GPS precision, and motor controllers. The success of the Indian startup was evident when 3D images of Bapu with his walking stick graced the Rajpath sky and impressed everyone in the audience.

"We thought of a concept in which we would show six to seven patterns. This had to be then converted into an animation on a computer. This is a very time-consuming exercise and each animation can take up to two weeks,” Dr Ahlawat explained.

She further said, “And then we run this animation through simulations to ensure that drones don't collide with each other and account for factors like speed of the air. After this, we feed the programme into each drone and then take them to the ground and carry out test flights."

A Success Story of Make In India

Botlabs Dynamics was founded in 2016 by Tanmay Bhunkar, along with Dr. Sarita Ahlawat, a professor at IIT-Delhi. Tanmay was later joined by Anuj - his roommate and friend from college, and together they started the journey of Botlabs Dynamics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi campus.

Image source: Press Information Bureau

In their very first project, the company made 8 drones that would join Delhi Police’s security fleet. Shortly after that, the industry started recognizing the business model, and it was incubated in the Technology Business Incubator Unit at IIT Delhi. In the same year, BotLabs Dynamics sold heavy lifting systems to Indian Agriculture Research Insitute (IARI).

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The first major funding for the single tech platform came from the Government of India in 2017 when it was awarded INR 50 Lakhs in the Nidhi-SST project. In 2018, the company was selected by Army Design Bureau to demonstrate heavy-lifting drones in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh.

What’s next for the Indian Startup?

After the massive success of the Rajpath show, BotLab Dynamics has left a permanent mark in the drone-show business. So far, in India, foreign companies would conduct them and charge exorbitant fees for each show. “A Russian group did a show of 500 drones in Lucknow and for INR 4 crore. In that amount, a startup in India can be funded,” Tanmay Bhunkar said.

The company has already started receiving enquiries from corporates who want to use drone shows for product launches. Various ministries have also made enquiries on how the technology can be used to promote various government schemes. Clearly, the future looks bright and shiny for BotLabs Dynamics and Make in India.