Aviation Ministry invites PLI schemes for drones along with its components
- ByStartupStory | May 6, 2022
The Ministry of Civil Aviation has invited applications under the scheme of Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for drones and its components. The ministry has opened the portal for submission of the application for the manufacturers of drones and its components who have passed the PLI eligibility threshold for the previous fiscal year (1st April 2021 – 31st March 2022). It has also announced the last day of submission of the applications which is 20th May 2022. And on 30th June 2022 of the PLI beneficiaries is anticipated to be released after the thorough scrutiny of their financial results and other specified documents.
Originally, in April 2022, a provisional list of 14 PLI beneficiaries was released by the Ministry based on the financial results submitted by the PLI applicants for the ten-month period (1st April 2021 to 31st January 2022). This list included five drone manufacturers and nine drone component manufacturers including Chennai-based Dhaksha Unmanned Systems, ideaForge Technology headquartered in Mumbai, Delhi NCR-based IoTechWorld Aviation, Omnipresent Robot Technologies based in Gurugram, and Noida based-Raphe mPhibr.
Last week, ideaForge raised around $20 million in a Series B funding round led by a private equity firm Florintree with the involvement from other existing investors such as Celesta, Infosys, Qualcomm, Infina, along with the Exim Bank of India. This startup will utilize the funding to boost the investment in research and development as well as to expand globally and increase hiring across key verticals. The other beneficiaries in th list include Bengaluru-based Paras Aerospace, Chennai-based Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies and Adani-Elbit advanced systems, a joint venture between Adani Defence and Israel’s Elbit Systems for creating unmanned aerial platforms.
Therefore, the eligibility measures for the PLI scheme for drones and drone components comprises of an annual sales turnover of Rs 2 crore for drone companies and Rs 50 lakhs for drone components manufacturers with a value edition of more tha 40% of sales turnover.
The PLI scheme for drones and its components was notified on 30th September 2021 with a total incentive of Rs 120 crore distributed over 3 financial years that nearly doubles the combined turnover of all domestic drone manufacturers of FY 2020-21. Also, the PLI rate of value addition is 20% which is one of the highest among other PLI schemes. In addition to this, the Goverment of India has carried over a series of reforms to emerge India as a global drone hub by the end of 2030.
Follow Startup Story
Related Posts
