INDIGENOUS DRONE TECH

Zuppa is driving India's self-reliance in drone technology with proprietary autopilots, secure electronic systems, and battlefield-ready UAVs. Focused on cybersecurity, military applications, and academia-industry collaboration, the company aims to position India as a global drone hub, as highlighted by Founder & Technical Director VENKATESH SAI, Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies

- VENKATESH SAI

How did Zuppa originate, and what inspired you to focus on indigenous drone technologies?

We’ve been involved with drones for over a decade now, during the early days around 2011-12 we were system integrators importing components and putting together the drones. It was during one of these early projects when we were putting together India's first man backpack fixed wing UAV for National Aerospace Labs (NAL) that we realised that it was the Autopilot/Flight Controller that enabled unmanned flight i.e. it was THE COMPONENT that replaced the Human Pilot in the Aircraft and converted it into a drone. The fact that the side of the controller reduced from 6ft Human to a 6cm PCB that enabled the aircraft size to shrunk to the sizes we see today. It was this realisation that inspired us to focus on developing the indigenous drone technology.

Once we realised the criticality of this technology we went on to biomimic 3 million years of evolution by converting the human control system into electronics.

Can you share some of the recent developments?