IG Drones: Meet The Indian Startup That Was Key To Operation Sindoor

In the post mortem of the brief but tense clashes between India and Pakistan in the first half of May, we are getting a peek into the technology that’s part of India’s defence arsenal and the drone warfare strategy.  

A detailed breakdown of India’s military and air force action released by the government shows increased reliance on drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. It shows that IG Drones was one of the partners for the Indian government in supplying drones and offering drones-related services such as surveying, mapping and reconnaissance.   

Besides the Noida-based startup, Indian army deployed homegrown Swarm drones as well as other foreign-origin loitering munitions also known as kamikaze drones and armed drones. But Operation Sindoor’s high-profile coverage around the globe has thrust IG Drones into the spotlight. 

Founded by Bodhisattwa Sanghapriya, Om Prakash, Ashish Kumar Jena and Shuvam Dash in 2018, IG Drones began as an engineering college project when the founders were studying in Odisha. Over the course of its seven year journey till now, the startup has built a portfolio of four drones, three of which are focussed on surveillance, data collection and monitoring. 

IG Drones bagged a “significant contract” from the Indian Army in January to deliver domestically built VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) and FPV (first-person view) drones within a month. 

“These advanced drone systems, tailored for high-altitude and tactical operations, will play a pivotal role in ensuring reliable surveillance, precise intelligence gathering, and enhanced border security,” RC Padhi, senior vice president (R&D), told Inc42. 

In particular, the startup takes on the likes of listed majors such as ideaForge and DroneAcharya, both of which provide drones as a service (DaaS) to their customers. So how did IG Drones outcompete these two companies in bagging the government contracts? 

The College Project That Inspired IG Drones

In 2014, Sanghapriya and his classmates, then first year students, were given a problem to solve: sediment accumulation in the Hirakud reservoir. This is a common occurrence in India where local government bodies work with colleges on infrastructure issues or engineering problems. 

In this case, to survey the sediment accumulation, the group decided to undertake a cumbersome project, build a satellite for this situation.  “The satellite was the easy part. Building a launch vehicle? That’s where we hit a wall,” the founder recalled.

The project, which was named VSLV Rocket Program, got support from ISRO and was billed as India’s first student body of engineering undergraduates that built a sounding rocket launch vehicle .

After getting acknowledgement for the project during the course, Sanghapriya began doubting the financial credibility of the project in the long term. “We realised rockets weren’t going to solve industry problems. They were too expensive and overengineered for what people actually needed,” he said.

The founder and his team began exploring drones as a low-cost, effective solution for land surveying. As engineers, they were well familiar with the technical aspects of drones, but incorporating a company was alien to the founders, Sanghapriya jokes. 

IG Drones was officially incorporated in April 2018, operating at first from a modest home office, the founder said. 

Navigating The Regulatory Skies

Of course, building a drone company in India isn’t just a technical or an incorporation challenge — it continues to be a regulatory maze today, and was even more complicated when IG Drones began. 

Sanghapriya recalls that IG Drones had to operate in an environment of stringent restrictions and bureaucratic bottlenecks from the very beginning. 

“Before 2021, even something as basic as conducting a survey required manual DGCA approval. Testing, assembling — every step was entangled in red tape. You couldn’t move fast even if you had the tech,” he added.

The early years were particularly stifling. Back in 2014, drones were effectively banned for civilian use, effectively derailing India’s drone industry at the time. 

The regulatory framework only began to evolve years later. A series of policy shifts between 2021 and 2023 finally brought clarity to the ecosystem. In particular, the Drone Rules of 2021 were a turning point in easing the licensing requirements and introducing more liberalised norms.

The focus was on homegrown and indigenous drones, so IG Drones invested more in developing its in-house capabilities, building its own drone components and assembly unit in Odisha. In 2024, it established a larger manufacturing unit in Gujarat’s Vadodara, which can produce 1,000 drones per year.

The startup’s focus on indigenisation played a major role in its bid to win defence contracts, the CEO said. 

What It Takes To Bag Defence Contracts

While IG Drones has previously had contracts for surveillance from private enterprises like HCL, Reliance Power, Adani Group, there’s one big fish in the drone industry that everyone wants: government contracts. 

The startup has also worked with the government of Odisha in the past, but becoming a supplier to the central armed forces is a major step up. How did IG Drones prepare itself for this? 

“From 2022 onward, we stopped thinking like a startup and started thinking like a defence OEM,” Sanghapriya said, adding that this meant focussing only on specifications.

While many firms retrofitted existing drone designs to meet government needs, the startup started by decoding what the Indian defence ecosystem needs — from altitude ranges and endurance metrics to EMI shielding and payload versatility. 

This helped it tailor its design and hardware, particularly the VTOL Skyhawk drone, for actual combat zones, disaster corridors, and remote-border ops. “We knew our drone would be put through extreme testing by PSUs, defence labs, or even directly on the field. There was no room for fluff,” the CEO added.

Skyhawk is a 5G-enabled drone with an endurance of three hours and can climb as high as 400 ft above ground level. It can travel as far as 15 km beyond the pilot’s direct line of sight. 

The other key facet was high engagement with the customers to customise the product and the service delivery. Sanghapriya maintains that the startup approaches every order as a full-cycle relationship: from pitch and prototype, to on-site demos, field trials, live feedback loops, and final deployment. 

“When issues arise, we respond quickly. It’s not about claiming we have a perfect product, but about providing proactive service and support when things go wrong,” he claimed. 

Beating India’s Deeptech Problem

India’s deeptech industry is a hard place to flourish, even if one manages to bag major defence contracts and be deployed in India’s largest drone-based military action. IG Drones has been in the market talking to investors for months to raise funding. 

Over the seven years of its operation, the startup has managed to raise a mere $1.4 Mn till date. And the startup claims it’s close to raising another $10 Mn from its existing investors, including India Accelerator and unnamed investors.

In India’s deeptech sector, the lack of patient capital is a sore point, and this debate has come to the forefront in recent months. As per Inc42 data, deeptech startups raised about $2 Bn between 2014 and 2024, but this pales in comparison to app-based sectors such as food delivery or ecommerce.  

Speaking on the deeptech funding issue, Sanghapriya agrees there’s some hesitation from investors, with many VCs saying the scaling up journey is slower compared to other sectors. 

“It’s not as easy to scale the business. But deeptech has its place. The industry is definitely growing. Drones are no longer just used for fun or events. These are practical, impactful use cases,” he opined.

IG Drones claims that its operating revenue for the entire fiscal year FY25 zoomed 330% to INR 22.4 Cr from INR 5.2 Cr in FY24 because of the new defence contracts. Inc42 has not seen these financials and the company has not filed its numbers for the last fiscal year.  

But there’s a lot of room for growth. Listed drone company ideaForge’s operating revenue for Q4 FY25 slumped 80% YoY to INR 20.3 Cr as revenue from defence contracts shrunk to just 4% of the company’s total revenue pie. The company reported a loss greater than about INR 5 Cr from its revenue for the quarter. 

Another listed drone company DroneAcharya’s consolidated PAT plunged to INR 1.50 Cr as of September 2024 from INR 3.96 Cr a year ago. For the first half of FY25 i.e. from April to September 2024, DroneAcharya reported INR 26.90 Cr in revenue. 

IG Drones is not far behind, but it has to scale up quickly to compete more consistently with these listed companies or outpace them in the future. 

Indeed, both ideaForge and DroneAcharya are struggling to grow their topline because of a decline in revenue from defence contracts. So there could be some headwinds in the future for IG Drones and other drone companies that rely heavily on defence contracts. 

“We’ve closed several big deals, both in the private and government sectors. For instance, we closed an order with one of India’s leading power companies, where they’ve asked for their own fleet of drones, which is valued at over INR 2 Cr. There are also multiple state governments buying drones for policing and surveillance,” he said. 

Besides drones for defence uses, IG Drones has launched a commercial drone named Kisaan for agricultural applications, and it also offers drone pilot training modules in its educational wing. 

However, as evidenced in the government’s disclosure, there is greater reliance on foreign contractors and defence manufacturers as they have the scale to meet India’s demand. 

So even as Operation Sindoor has opened one door for IG Drones, the startup has no option but to diversify well beyond government contracts, and potentially even work with aerospace and spacetech companies to bring its drone technology into play within their applications.

(Edited by: Nikhil Subramaniam)