Hyderabad: E-commerce site Flipkart on Friday announced its cooperation with the Telangana government to begin a consortium tasked with the extension and execution of the drone deliveries of medical supplies to remote areas under the ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project. As part of the consortium, Flipkart will utilize learnings from its tech-enabled supply chain to use drones and facilitate deliveries of medical supplies.
The e-commerce giant said that these efforts will be complemented with technologies such as geo-mapping, routing of shipments and track and trace of location, etc., formed by Flipkart over the years in helping millions of customers over the country. A blend of these technologies will then be used to manage Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) deliveries in remote areas of the state where the road infrastructure is not favorable for the fast delivery of vaccines.
The pilot project is supposed to be conducted for over six days and will be tested for delivering thousands of vaccines while keeping in mind all the safety and efficiency parameters. ‘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. It is a decisive step in making use of cutting-edge technologies for the safety and wellbeing of the masses,’ said Rajneesh Kumar, Senior Vice-President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Flipkart.
Featured Videos from TNM, ‘We are proud to partner the Telangana government in leading the consortium by utilizing our nuanced understanding of supply chain and technologies governing the automated movement of shipments in fulfilling the dire needs of citizens across the state. This pilot will set the premise for the utilization of drone systems in providing healthcare and product delivery in remote areas and even during disasters,’ he added.
Jayesh Ranjan, Telangana’s Principal Secretary, IT and I&C, said Telangana has been an explorer in using technology for enhancing 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,’ he said.
The World Economic Forum and Healthnet Global Ltd conceptualized the ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project, which outlines the necessities for drone delivery and how to evaluate proposals. The Telangana government has used this framework to execute drones for last-mile delivery and will blend them into the state’s healthcare supply chain.
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