Drones made by IIT-Delhi-incubated startup BotLab Dynamics lit up sky at Beating Retreat ceremony

By Archana Prasad
New Delhi [India], February 17 : BotLab Dynamics, a startup incubated at IIT Delhi, has been working on building robotics for more than 5 years. The drones made by the IIT-Delhi startup lit up the sky at the Beating Retreat ceremony and also this Republic Day.
Sarita Ahalawat, co-founder of BotLab Dynamics, while exclusively speaking to ANI said, "BotLab Dynamics is a start-up incubated at IIT Delhi. We have been working on building robotics for more than 5 years. We have been specified in the drone domain. Initially, we optimised a single drone domain but eventually, it occurred to us that it would be more useful to connect multiple drones."
"So with that idea that we can put LED light in a drone, it can be a useful formation is when the Ministry of Defence contacted us we were asked to do a thousand drones light show on the occasion of Beating Retreat," she said.
Ahalawat said they built their own drone hardware and associated software for the last five years. "We have been building all the essential components of the drone. Three important components, flight controller which is the brain of the drone, GPS which gives the precision and the motor controller-- all the components we built ourselves indigenously in the IIT Delhi. With that capability we knew that we could scale it up but of course challenges were there," said the co-founder of BotLab Dynamics.
Speaking about the Beating Retreat preparation, Sarita said, "When The Ministry of Defence asked us, we were only at 100 drones. Imagine from 100 drones we have to go 1,000 and we had very little time. Being at IIT we love to take challenges-- we had to work with chip shortage as due to COVID the supply chain was broken. But because of our skills, we managed to take different shapes and redesign our circuits. So in six months, we planned well and we were able to execute it not just in terms of hardware."
"A lot of people tell me how special it is that we had drone light show. I would tell them it is even more special that each drone is built in-house at IIT Delhi and that is a bigger deal than the entire show," said the BotLab Dynamics co-founder.
Speaking about her team, Sarita said, "There is Tanmay, Anuj and I. We are three co-founders of this startup. We are united by one mission that we want to build hardware in India. India is known for software base solutions-- Flipkart, Swiggy-- all these are software service solutions but there are not many examples of hardware-based solutions. Our passion is to build hardware in India and I have presented in this domain good quality hardware solutions."
"Initially when we started it was just three of us, now we have a total of 42 people. Most of them are engineers so our entire team is technical in nature and that enables us to solve this problem."
"In future, if we connect 3,000 drones to single users, then we will become the second country in the world to have that capability and if we get enough resources, then connecting 7,500 drones will make our country first in the world to do so. Our plan is to scale this up and built capability," said Sarita.
Talking about her future plans, she said, "Second thing we are working on is to use a smaller number of drones let say 20 or 50 and have them more capable use them for defence so that we have surveillance, logistic, disaster management. In Defence, if such capabilities are deployed, we will be able to save costs and save lives."
"After 29 Jan, we had several meetings with big corporate firms, mid-level corporates as we are now looking for partners so that we can scale up to international level."
IIT Delhi alumni Tanmay Bunkar, co-founder of BotLab Dynamics said, "We have stated this startup to decrease our dependence on hardware and software especially when it comes to drone technology. Most of the hardware that we operate as of now is imported."
Speaking about his team, Bunkar said, "Anuj was my roommate and also my batchmate during our graduation. We use to discuss how everything is imported and how can we do something about it so after graduation we started this."
"The plane in the sky, the phone in our hand everything has been made somewhere else not here in India. That is the only thing that resonated-- Let's do something about it, let's make something in India."
"Short term plan is to scale our fleet, scale the number of drones as of now. We have 1,200 drones with us. Objective is to get to 5,000 by end of this year. The stretched goal is to fly 75,000 drones as soon as possible that will make India the first country in the world to demonstrate such a large fleet. Long term vision is to have network zone flying everywhere for civil and defence applications," said Tanmay Bunkar.