Flipkart to conduct pilot on drone deliveries of vaccines in Telangana

The pilot, which is expected to be conducted for over six days, will be tested out for delivering thousands of vaccines while ensuring all the safety and efficiency parameters

Hyderabad: Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, partnered with the Telangana government to lead a consortium tasked with the development and execution of the drone deliveries of medical supplies to remote areas under the ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project.

The project is conceived by the World Economic Forum and Healthnet Global that outlines the requirements for drone delivery and how to assess proposals. The Telangana government has adopted this framework to implement drones for last mile delivery and will integrate them into the State’s healthcare supply chain.

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As part of the consortium, Flipkart will utilise learnings from its tech-enabled supply chain to deploy drones and enable deliveries of medical supplies. These efforts will be complemented with technologies such as geo mapping, routing of shipments and track & trace of location.

A combination of these technologies will then be used to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) deliveries in remote areas of Telangana for fast delivery of vaccines. The pilot, which is expected to be conducted for over six days, will be tested out for delivering thousands of vaccines while keeping in mind all the safety and efficiency parameters.

Commenting on this development, Rajneesh Kumar, senior vice-president and chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart said, “The Covid-19 crisis has pushed the envelope in the rapid development of scalable and robust technologies and the ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project is a testament to that.”

Kumar further added, “It is a decisive step in making use of cutting-edge technologies for the safety and wellbeing of the masses. This pilot will set the premise for the utilisation of drone systems in providing healthcare and product delivery in remote areas and even during disasters.”

Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary (IT and I&C), Government of Telangana said, “Telangana has been a pioneer in using technology for improving the lives of the citizens. Using drones to deliver healthcare supplies to people in remote and inaccessible areas is a one-of-a-kind initiative ever undertaken in our country and we are happy to lead this initiative in collaboration with partners such as Flipkart. This will go a long way in testing best-in-class technology solutions to tide over future crises.”

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