Blue Dart to trial pharma drone delivery in India
13 / 05 / 2021
Express delivery firm Blue Dart will begin trials of delivering pharma and medical shipments to remote locations in India using drones.
The company has established Blue Dart Med-Express Consortium to join the Medicine from the Sky project in collaboration with the Government of Telangana, World Economic Forum, government agency Niti Aayog and Healthnet Global.
The Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has granted the project with necessary exemptions and rights to fly drone flights on an experimental basis in Telangana.
“The aim is to assess an alternate logistics route in providing safe, accurate and reliable pickup and delivery of health care items (medicines, covid-19 vaccines, units of blood, diagnostic specimens and other lifesaving equipment) from distribution centre to specific location and back,” Blue Dart said.
Ketan Kulkarni, head of business development at Blue Dart, said: “The consortium aims at enabling safer, efficient and cost-effective drone delivery flights. With efficient systems in place, it can help reduce the current logistics cost, making the healthcare logistics faster and efficient.”
