Drone-based package delivery set to take off across Delhi-NCR soon

Residents of the national capital region (Delhi-NCR) will soon have drones delivering their packages. Skye Air, a company that uses drones to deliver ecommerce and quick-commerce packages, plans to expand operations to Delhi-NCR this year. The company currently delivers packages via drones in Gurugram and parts of Bengaluru.

 

Ankit Kumar, chief executive officer of Skye Air, said, “The immediate focus lies in taking our operations multi-city. We will penetrate deeper into Gurugram and Bengaluru and also expand to Delhi, Faridabad, and the entire NCR. Probably next year, we will look at going to Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and a few other locations.”

 

The company plans to target high-density areas in Delhi-NCR, preferably 8-9 pin codes, Kumar said. “In Delhi, we are not looking to expand beyond the western and southern parts of the city. In Bengaluru, just one pin code is active. We are looking to make 4-5 pin codes active in the next three months and then scale up.”

 

He added that in Gurugram, the company is serving 70 societies in 28 pin codes.

 

Founded in 2020, the Gurugram-headquartered company has already onboarded 12 logistics partners, including Blue Dart, Shiprocket, DTDC, and Ecom Express and plans to onboard more this calendar year (CY).

 

“Towards the end of the year, we will have 17-18 partners. Our 12 existing partners have a large customer base, so the idea is to scale more with them and add a few more,” Kumar said, and hinted that the company is also looking to onboard quick-commerce companies.

 

Skye Air has set a target to deliver 5 million packages via drones this CY. The company said it delivered 1.2 million packages in CY24, and has delivered an average 150,000 packages per month in CY25.

 

Talking about the size of its teams, Kumar said, “We have 95 people in the organisation of which the number of people in the operations team, which includes pilots and hub managers, is 55-60. Towards the end of the year, we will witness 1.5 times growth in headcount in the operations team.”

 

Drones used by Skye Air carry around 4 kilograms on average and the maximum weight-carrying capacity of these drones is 10 kilograms.