Flipkart to test drone delivery of vaccine, meds in Telangana

„Pilot run is part of ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project

Homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart on Friday said it has 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.

As part of the consortium, Bengaluru-based Flipkart will deploy drones and enable deliveries of vaccines and medical supplies.

These efforts will be complemented with technologies such as geo mapping, routing of shipments and track and trace of location etc, developed by Flipkart over the years in serving millions of customers across the country, a Flipkart statement said.

A combination of these technologies will then be used to conduct 'Beyond Visual Line of Sight' (BVLOS) deliveries in remote areas of the state.

The pilot, to be conducted for over six days, will be tested out for delivering thousands of vaccines.

"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 VP and chief corporate affairs officer, Flipkart.

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.

Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary (IT and I&C), Government of Telangana said the state has been a pioneer in using technology for improving the lives of the citizens.