Flying High: Suhas Tejaskanda, Founder, Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace The startup is now aiming to serve farmers with India's only make-in-India agriculture drones
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Suhas Tejaskanda, the founder of drone manufacturing and services startup, Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace takes pride in the fact that in just two years, his drones are protecting Indian PM Narendra Modi and partnered with Special Protection Group and L&T. "Killer unmanned aircrafts is the deadliest weapon that is developed for Indian Defence forces to make our forces combat ready," shares Tejaskanda, who also worked on AI-based Next Gen Futuristic warfare system to reduce soldier casualties, and has three patents to his name and claims to be the first person in India to file a patent in semiconductor and integrated circuit technology.
Since independence, India always relied on foreign companies like Boeing, Airbus etc. for aircraft/unmanned Aircraft, Tejaskanda wanted to remove this dependency of Indians on foreign countries. "There was not even a single flying object in India that was DGCA Type approved for airworthiness. So we started to work on building the technology. On 3rd Nov 2023, DGCA, Ministry of Civil Aviation approved Airworthiness for our unmanned Aircraft system making it India's first and only Type certified indigenous Unmanned Aircrafts technology," he shares.
The startup is now aiming to serve farmers with India's only make-in-India agriculture drones, "Drone applications in the civilian sector are growing far faster than in the defence sector. Drones for agriculture have become popular." He notes that in their partnership with Tescom, the startup has built the first-ever production plant for unmanned aircraft. Tejaskanda aims to significantly reduce dependence on component imports. Additionally, FWDA has set up a base in Florida, US and will be spreading to European and African countries this year.
Type certification was their most important accomplishment in joining the Indian businesses with domestic flying objects. On the financial front, it aims to achieve breakeven in the next four months and already has a strong order book of INR 106 cr for FY24-25.
FACTSHEET:
No. of Employees: 52
No. of Co-Founders: 3
