Akshata Sharma
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Ecom Express will begin a drone delivery pilot this week in the Delhi NCR-region
The startup plans to expand the pilot in a staged manner. After Delhi, it will be launched in Bengaluru, and later in parts of Chandigarh.
Ecom Express has partnered drone startup Skye Air for the pilot - plans to start drone deliveries with 500 shipments/day for the first 2 weeks, and then increase it to 2,000 shipments/day.
How Drone Deliveries work?
Explaining the procedure for drone deliveries, Nadamani said that the packages will be delivered to Skye Air's mother pod during Ecom Express's milk run in a particular area.
For the uninitiated, a milk run is a daily fixed route taken by a logistics company to pick and drop packages.
From there, drones, which can carry a weight of up to 5 kg, will carry the packages to the delivery pod zone located within a radius of 500 metres to 1 km from the recipients' addresses. Delivery executives of Skye Air will then deliver the packages to the customers either on foot or bicycle.
The Drone Race In India's Logistics Market
As per the partnership agreement, Ecom Express will be paying a per delivery fee to Skye Air for the pilot. However, Nadamani said that drone deliveries have the potential to make shipping faster, help logistics companies earn extra revenue, and improve their ESG scores by reducing their carbon footprint.
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