Skye Air Mobility, a Drone delivery platform, has announced that it has partnered with Curefoods to deliver frozen food to cloud kitchens in temperature-controlled boxes, with the help of drones.
Read: June 2022 Issue of Food InfoTech Magazine.
The week-long BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) trials began on July 25 from Curefoods’ warehouse in Jhund Sarai in Gurugram to its kitchen outlet on Golf Course Road in Gurugram, according to Skye Air Mobility.
According to the report published on OutlookIndia, the trials included up to six flights per day, each carrying a payload of 5kg in temperature-controlled boxes that maintained a negative 20-degree temperature to keep the frozen food fresh.
Skye Air’s flagship unmanned aerial vehicle, Skye Ship One, has been used to facilitate real-time deliveries while ensuring optimal flight safety and temperature monitoring.
Commenting on company’s partnership with Curefoods, Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air Mobility said, “This collaboration is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the direction of utilising cutting-edge technology to deliver food. Curefoods has taken an innovative approach towards improving logistics and further serving the demand of consumers.”
“Skye Air anticipates gathering more data on route, flight, and cost-economic viability through the ongoing trials in order to develop models for commercial flights to begin in the coming months,” he added.
“With the immense technological advancements, in the food-tech space drone delivery is going to change the game in the future. With drone delivery being initiated globally, this association with Skye Air Mobility is a pilot experiment to explore drone delivery as a viable food delivery option”, said Ankit Nagori, founder of Curefoods.
“Starting with B2B pilot kitchen deliveries which ensure a larger quantity at a lesser cost, we will be looking at B2C food deliveries soon in the future,” he added.
This development comes at a time when Swiggy has yet to begin work three months after announcing plans to use drones for its Instamart platform.
Earlier, the drone startup used drones to deliver essential medicines and critical lab samples from Kozhikode to Areekode in Kerala’s Malappuram district. A similar project was launched in Bengaluru.