Infosys said on December 15 that it has invested an undisclosed amount in the Indian UAV manufacturing startup, ideaForge. Infosys has been aggressively investing on startups in the current quarter. It will fund ideaForge through its Innovation Fund. The investment is subject to receipt of regulatory approvalsand customary closing conditions.

ideaForge’s drones have fully autonomous operation, failsafe technology, high endurance and can offer image intelligence with live feed as well as support complex payloads like thermal and high-resolution imagery. ideaForge’s UAVs have been deployed by the Indian Armed Forces for surveillance, crowd monitoring and rescue operations.

“ideaForge’s high performance UAVs, which have been designed and built in India, have significant potential in industrial use cases. We are looking forward to working with ideaForge and bringing their technology, expertise and solutions to our clients to unlock new business insights from operational data that has previously been difficult to obtain”, Infosys Executive Vice President & Global Head of Corporate Development & Ventures, Ritika Suri said.

Infosys had founded the Innovation Fund in 2013. I increased the size of the funds, provided by Innovation Fund, five folds in 2015, to US $500 million. Innovation Fund especially funds those startups dealing with technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). ideaForge is a Bengaluru – based startup and has spoken many times about its strategy to build new technological capabilities like design thinking and artificial intelligence.

“We are very excited to have Infosys as our investor and our partner for exploring UAV services and solutions for global customers. This partnership will play an important role in our industrial expansion to address a wide variety of data acquisition and analysis needs”, ideaForge Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO),said.

UAV technology is a relatively under – explored domain in India. That is what the US military, the most powerful military in the world, is famous for. The live feed offered by forgeIdea’s UAVs through high – resolution imagery and thermal imagery is already very useful to the Indian Armed Forces. It will be even more useful if the existing technologies are enhanced and new technologies are explored (like battle drones).

They will give the Indian Armed Forces an edge while doing rescue operations (high resolution images of the affected site will be very useful to determine the next course of action) or while being engaged in battle(thermal images will enable the Indian Armed Forces to see their enemy targets well at night). The UAVs manufactured by ideaForge are truly ‘need of the hour’ as far as Indian Armed Forces are concerned. It is heartening to see an innovative and technological Indian startup like ideaForge get funded by an Indian company like Infosys. The Government of India must fund and promote more innovative and useful startups like ideaForge.

Source: Indianceo

Image Courtesy: ibnlive