A niche waiting to be filled

DRONE specialist Fiona Lake said there existed an enormous opportunity to develop a business centred around drones.

The areas of opportunity lay around solving software glitches and collected data analysis, which she saw as particularly suited to rural women looking for a part-time income stream servicing their regional community.

“Drones are easy to fly, but being new technology, the software is fairly complex, and everybody who flies drones at some point will have a headache with the software,” she said.

“One of the areas I touch on in workshops is the huge area of demand for people in service industries: for ag-tech generally, not just drones.

“It’s an un-met demand.”

As ag-tech develops, what might initially be a part-time business could grow into something much larger.

Options could include a flow-on from sales to servicing, or speciality data and software analysis.

“There is going to be increasing specialisation, so the analysis of the data will be one of those specialities.

“No one in the bush has the spare time, so to buy a drone, collect data and do detailed analysis, many times they are better off to buy the services of a consultant to do that collection and analysis for them.

“At the moment, in the north, there is almost no one doing it.”

Ms Lake said rural people were better placed to fill the niche.