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ATM News Network: India's leading manufacturer of agricultural drones IO Techworld Aviation and agrochemicals major Syngenta India have jointly developed a sustainable DaaS business model. The company will start commercial spraying services in four key states - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana - during the next Kharif and Rabi seasons.
IO Techworld Aviation and Syngenta have organised drone yatras in 13 states. These drone yatras demonstrate the benefits of agricultural drones to over 1 lakh farmers on a 17,000 km journey.
A joint pilot project with actual agrochemicals was successfully conducted in Ludhiana, Punjab. In this, farmers and agribusinesses are being educated about the benefits of drone technology for spraying agrochemicals.
Explaining the plan, Deepak Bhardwaj and Anup Upadhyay, co-founders of IO Techworld Aviation, said, "We have partnered with Syngenta India to deploy drones for spraying across India. We have conducted a pilot programme in Punjab and are getting encouraging responses. In a next step, both companies plan to jointly operate in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The idea behind this is to make farmers and other stakeholders aware of the benefits of using drones to spray fertiliser.
Saurabh Srivastava, General Manager, Sales, IO Techworld Aviation and Mahantesh Chulki, Head of Operations, Syngenta India, said that the idea of this sustainable, group-based 'DaaS' business model has attracted many agro-tech companies and citizens. Even financial institutions like SBI are providing capital loans up to Rs 2 crore through the central government's National Agricultural Infrastructure Financing Facility Scheme. They are also very confident in disbursing loans.
The State Bank of India has already disbursed loans to drone service providers in Haryana, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. These loans are for the Daas model developed by IO Techworld Aviation and Syngenta under the National Agricultural Infrastructure Financing Facility Scheme.
Syngenta India and IO Techworld Aviation have recently joined hands to launch drone spraying services across the country. Under the agreement, both partners will work together to promote the spraying of Syngenta chemicals using IO Techworld Aviation's drone technology. Apart from this, both companies will work to create employment opportunities by training rural youth to use drone technology.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by ATM staff and is published from a web feed.)
