PUNE From humble beginnings as a group of young engineers with a shared passion for drones, CerebroSpark Innovations LLP (CSI) has soared to the forefront of India’s drone technology landscape. The team embarked on a mission to create a ‘smart toy-like drone’ that would ignite the imaginations of their fellow enthusiasts.
Ganesh Thorat and Mihir Kedar, co-founders of CSI, have now established themselves as leading manufacturer and provider of drone-based solutions with applications in agriculture, surveillance, and delivery sectors.
In the beginning
Ganesh and Mihir are mechanical engineers from JSPM’s Jayawantrao Sawant College of Engineering in Hadapsar. Coming from a tier-3 city like Solapur, Ganesh never had exposure to national-level competitions or hackathons for students. So, after coming to Pune for his mechanical engineering education, Ganesh observed for the first year how students do engineering projects or participate in various competitions.
Ganesh said, “One team from our college won the Smart India Hackathon and I saw how got wide coverage in the city. I had done small projects, but in the second year, I decided to do a big project. I spoke with our faculty and seniors from college and they connected me with Mihir, who was studying in his first year of mechanical engineering. Including us both, we formed a team of nine enthusiastic students, who would work on a project. I came up with the idea of making a drone. This was in 2018.”
“Our team began basic research by browsing the internet about how drones work and how we can make one. We all were from the mechanical branch, and our college did not have aerospace faculty. So, one of our professors, suggested that our team could participate in the Smart India Hackathon with our project. Meanwhile, we found two experts to contact, but only one of them entertained us. He told us that we would require ₹40,000 to make a drone, but our budget was only ₹9,000. We were a bit disappointed, but our faculty mentor helped us by arranging the remaining amount,” said Ganesh.
{{/usCountry}}“Our team began basic research by browsing the internet about how drones work and how we can make one. We all were from the mechanical branch, and our college did not have aerospace faculty. So, one of our professors, suggested that our team could participate in the Smart India Hackathon with our project. Meanwhile, we found two experts to contact, but only one of them entertained us. He told us that we would require ₹40,000 to make a drone, but our budget was only ₹9,000. We were a bit disappointed, but our faculty mentor helped us by arranging the remaining amount,” said Ganesh.
{{/usCountry}}Crash landing
Ganesh, Mihir and their team were working on their drone project along with their regular college studies. Finally, they succeeded in making a drone, just three days before their examination was about to start.
Filled with excitement as their drone took the first flight in Narhe, Ganesh and his team took the drone to their college in Hadapsar, to demonstrate in front of their mentors.
“The drone took off superbly and crashed on the ground during the demo. We were so excited that we could not control it during landing. We had made the drone with an acrylic frame which was brittle and smashed to pieces due to the crash landing. We collected those pieces in a bag and took them home. We were dejected, but the team decided to build the drone again. We started our work that night around 9pm and made a new drone at 4am the next morning. We successfully demonstrated to our mentors at 11am on the second day. We had learnt a lot of things about the frames and the electronic calculations,” Mihir recalls.
Learnings
Ganesh’s team had developed the concept of monitoring traffic using drones. Their project was selected for an expo organised at IIT Madras. It was the first time that the students were getting national exposure for their project.
Ganesh shared his learnings during that expo. He said, “When we reached IIT Madras, we were amazed by the quality of products being displayed there. We saw a carbon fibre frame used for a drone for the first time in our lives. Some drones, of which some were already deployed in defence applications, had a good product, display and finishing quality. Our drone’s built-in quality was not good and we learned a lot of things. We returned to Pune with a resolution to make our products of high quality.”
Start the startup
Ganesh and Mihir were in a dilemma to start their own company or wait for campus placements. They were afraid that their startup would fail and nobody would offer them a job. Other teammates had also left them by then. But then, the two decided to give it a try and incorporated CSI in 2020. Ganesh was in the last year, while Mihir was in the third year of engineering. Incidentally, they got news coverage for their traffic project which boosted their confidence.
Mihir said, “We decided to make parts of the drone during the Covid lockdown. We tried prototyping a frame and propeller, but it did not work out. Then we decided to make a nano-drone typically used for photography. It was a 250-gram small drone named CS Pride. We were also prototyping a bigger drone named CS Mamba. Meanwhile, we also conducted workshops and seminars for awareness about drones. This helped us generate a small revenue which covered our basic expenses. With the help of our college, we interacted with more than 1500 students through these activities.”
Young Changemakers
Ganesh was recognised as the top seven changemakers in India in August 2020 which brought him and his company on the radar of several incubators based in Pune.
Says Ganesh, “Being engineers, we were only focussed on developing the product. AIC-MIT ADT offered us pre-incubation, while we were already having a lab in JSPM’s college. Post-incubation we realised that we need to work on the business aspect too. In 2021, Sparkonix India, a company based in Chinchwad MIDC contacted us. Their problem statement was to clean internal dust and cobwebs using drones. The second lockdown was about to be imposed, but we said yes to them and received advance payment too. We made a hexacoptor-sized drone and with all calculations in place, we ordered components and started calibrations. The drone flew successfully and we completed the project. That is when we realised that we had a competitive edge for making large drones.”
Competitive edge
Ganesh and Mihir started exploring the government sector for drone applications. They came to know about a tender floated by the Bihar government for surveillance of illegal liquor-related activities. A company from Bihar won the bid and outsourced it to CSI, but the entrepreneur duo experienced several problems while dealing with them.
Ganesh said, “Mihir was appearing for his final exams, and we both had to go to Bihar to deploy the solutions. The Bihar-based company delayed our payments which created a lot of problems for us. We were in debt and dejected. But then after a few months, in the new round, we applied for the tender on our own and got selected.
Abhishek Rathi from Pune helped us with the funding this time, which empowered us to navigate through the crisis. We have also created a command control centre for the live streaming of drones flying in different districts of Bihar. This project is still live and we have deployed our solutions in seven districts of Bihar. We also got an opportunity to work with the College of Military Engineering and provided six drones for surveillance and delivery purposes.”
Krishi drone
While reading about a snake-bite incident from the Sinnar region of Nashik, Ganesh decided to make drones for farmers and agricultural purposes. While there were some international and national players in this sector, Ganesh had the advantage of having agriculture background employees who could spot the exact problems faced by farmers.
Ganesh says, “Farmers need around three hours to spray pesticides on a farm of one-acre size. Using drones, this time can be reduced to five minutes. Also, traditionally about 100 litres of water would be utilised in this activity, but with drones only 10 litres of water was consumed. We did some trials at Shindavne village near Pune and got on-ground feedback from farmers. We as drone operators understood the real challenges and got suggestions from farmers. Accordingly, we made changes to the nozzle and modified the drones. After six months of pilot projects, we launched ‘CS Krishi’ drone.”
Drone training
Ganesh also emphasised the need to train end-users to use the drones in agriculture sector. “We have started a new company for training and licensing purposes. Whoever purchases a drone from us, will have the option of getting trained from us and servicing and maintenance of drones. Most international manufacturers are unable to provide after-sales service and hence this could be our advantage.”
Next move
Sharing his plans for the next few years, Ganesh stated, “We will be covering the entire Maharashtra for the agricultural applications. Our vision is to have one drone in every village. To achieve this, we have started the Maharashtra Drone Yatra, wherein we are demonstrating to villagers and farmers the efficiency and utility of drones. We are trying to overcome the inertia farmers have while adopting drone technology. We are looking to launch drone delivery solutions for the health sector and are in the process of making vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones. Although drone manufacturing comes under the highly regulated sector of aviation, there is a lot of scope for business and scaling up.”