Exclusive Interview with Besta Prem Sai, Founder & CEO, VECROS

The first picture that comes to mind when we think of a drone, is a dumb machine flying at the mere instructions of a human. This idea is worth discarding, provided now we have drones delivering packages at the doorstep, that too to the right person. The AI on edge technology reduces the latency factor by preventing information leakage. It doesn't require a cloud environment that makes it possible for drones to process the information on-site as they encounter. VECROS is an AI-on-edge autonomous drone building company that builds flying machines with a 360-degree object avoidance capability even in GPS-less environments. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Besta Prem Sai, Founder & CEO, of VECROS.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

VECROS is India's first company to have AI-on-Edge drone technology. We are specialized in Visual Aided drone inspection. Our first product, "Athera" is having a unique capability like a 4G Autonomous drone with AI on edge to provide intelligent insights to the human remote operator and provide immense value by making our drone easy and safe. Athera can avoid obstacles in all directions in 3D space making it very robust and also it flies even in GPS less environment. Through AI on edge technology, we are providing real-time detection, tracking, and following to the targeted location. This enables the user to efficiently manage all the assets, areas, and dangerous/harmful remote sectors hassle-free and most importantly safely. We can provide services to many industries including but not limited to power lines and electric grid inspections and surveys, mining areas inspections and surveillance, oil and gas industries, chemical industries, etc.

2. With what mission and objectives, was the company set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

The company was set up 3 years ago with the mission to bring a unique product to the market which uses state-of-the-art drone technology and creates immense value. The problem we were aiming to solve is the manual, tedious and harmful inspections going on in the industries. With our passion for robotics and drones, we aimed to solve it by building a drone that has the smartness of a human and the agility of a flying robot. This was no easy task, given the resources and challenges we had at the earlier stage. Our drone is innovative not only with its software capabilities but on the hardware side too. We have built a hardware system that goes hand-in-hand with our operating system which runs the drone. Given that our robotics startup is product-based, we faced a lot of hardware challenges, but our vision for creating a valuable and useful product that will increase the productivity of the user kept us going.  Our mission is to make a fully autonomous drone that is very safe in an unknown and harsh environment.

3. Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions, and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

We are trusted by IIT Delhi, NSRCEL-IIMB, STARTUP OASIS, 100xVC, and many more reputed institutes for our innovation and products. Incubator Program FITT Incubation. We were the Winners of the Sterlite Innovation Challenge. Nvidia Inception/ Accelerator Program, Incubator Program Innocity Online Booster by Startup Oasis, Nvidia Inception/ Accelerator Program. Raised funding- 100xVC onboards with VECROS Journey, Mobility Startup Incubation by NSRCEL, and Maruti Suzuki India Limited.

4. Brief us about the proactive Founder of the company and his contributions to the company and the industry.

Besta Prem Sai is the founder who established VECROS just after graduating from IIT Delhi. He has a passion and experience for building drones from his college days and that played a crucial role in his overall growth and gave him a unique perspective. He is CEO of VECROS and is an engineer with a lot of passion for building robots and drones. He has contributed to establishing VECROS from the ground up and setting up all the processes and structure of the high-functioning and productive team. The team he built at VECROS is very productive and passionate engineers and students who strive to make a difference by creating a valuable and useful product. His contribution to the industry is precious by setting a standard for innovative technology.

5. Tell us how your company is contributing to the IoT/AI/Big Data Analytics/Robotics/Self-Driving Vehicles/Cloud Computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

We have made a drone that is AI-enabled and can perform AI analysis in real-time on the fly. The insights are beneficial and smart. From detecting, tracking, and following there are many applications we have done. We have made an intelligent drone that is autonomous and requires little to no human intervention. This is an incredibly powerful tool that can be used in a variety of ways, from surveillance and security to navigation and planning.  For example, in the bridge inspection, a human operator has to build a lot of setups to know which area is affected the most by corrosion. Despite that, you can use the VECROS drone Athera to directly launch from anywhere and gather useful information, real-time video transmission, etc. This is just one example, there are many industries where VECROS will play an important role. This will help the private as well as government clients reduce risk, and cost and increase productivity, time, and efficiency overall. For customers, it's 10 times faster and 30 times cheaper compared to the other players in the market.

6. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

The Major challenge we have faced till now is to get the resources from the vendors. The supply chain in India is not very efficient and we faced trouble procuring the requirements needed on time. Another thing is the semiconductor crisis which is affecting nearly every robotics company, which helped us to push the limits even further by arranging the system with what we have.

7. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

We have an AI-on-Edge drone that performs many real-time AI applications on drones. We have managed to achieve this with our innovative hardware and software integration. With this, we are also very much focused on making drones safer and for that, we have 360-degree obstacle avoidance with GPS-less Navigation. What differentiates us from other drone companies.

 8. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

We want to build our team strong by hiring talents across the country over the next few months. We are planning to make the drone size smaller and more efficient. We are planning to sell thousands of drones in the next 12 months.