The Russian company Transport of the Future will produce UAVs in India
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Russian UAV developer Transport of the Future plans to enter the Indian market in partnership with local Sasaa Electronics Private Limited. The parties will establish a joint venture that will assemble drones for the local market, expecting to take up to 25% by 2030. Experts call the project promising, but warn about fierce competition, sanctions and country risks.
Transport of the Future signed a memorandum of intent with the Indian Sasaa Electronics Private Limited to create a joint venture (JV) in India. It will produce UAVs for cargo delivery and agricultural monitoring on the Indian market, Transport of the Future told Kommersant.
The start of large-scale assembly is scheduled for 2024; by 2030, the joint venture hopes to occupy up to 25% of the local UAV market, which could potentially bring in up to $1.3 billion a year, the Russian company says.
In August, GlobeNewswire, citing data from RationalStat, estimated the UAV market in India at $1 billion, with potential to grow 18% per year over the next five years.
“The ultimate goal of the project is maximum localization of production,” added Sasaa Electronics CEO Rakesh Goel after signing the agreement at the Dubai Airshow. Investments, he said, will be “small, less than $10 million,” since the Indian side expects to use the existing production base.
According to SPARK-Interfax, Transport of the Future LLC was registered on November 26, 2021 and is 90% owned by Yuri Kozarenko, another 10% by Alexander Komaritsky. In 2022, the LLC’s revenue amounted to 2.8 million rubles. with a loss of 139 million rubles. For the Russian market, Transport of the Future is building a UAV production plant in the Samara region with a capacity of about 3 thousand unmanned air transport systems (UAS) per year. As Izvestia reported, the company’s investments in the project amounted to more than 6 billion rubles.
Kommersant was unable to find information specifically about Sasaa Electronics. But Rakesh Goel is also the director of Indian venture capital fund Sasaa Venture Private Limited.
Judging by the company’s website, it produces automotive electronic peripherals, chargers for smartphones, laptops, tablets, and CCTV cameras.
The step towards entering the international market for “Transport of the Future” looks logical, says the founder of RunAvia (digital UAS certification platform) Andrey Patrakov. According to him, for the Russian manufacturer Sasaa Electronics will be not only a technological partner, but also a regional one, opening access to the Indian market, where localization is a mandatory condition for work.
Mr. Patrakov noted that the Russian UAV market remains “regulatory closed”, and the introduced experimental legal regimes in a number of regions did not live up to expectations in the context of the ban on drone flights: “Entering the international UAS market through India is currently much more promising than the actually closed in the Russian Federation.”
The main problem in starting the production of drones in India may be a shortage of trained personnel, says Geoscan CEO Alexey Yuretsky: “For certain complex projects, Russian specialists had to be sent to India for long periods of time.”
Felix Fokin, CEO of Geo Innoter LLC, believes that the demand for Indian drones produced by the joint venture will depend on the development of drone delivery services in the country. “Competition among UAVs in the Indian market should increase several times by 2030, so it is difficult to say how a Russian company can take 25%,” he emphasizes.
In addition, according to Mr. Fokin, large Russian UAV manufacturers risk falling under US and EU sanctions, and Western drone vendors are also interested in the Indian market: “When the joint venture begins stable operation, there is a likely outcome in which the Indian side will want to buy out the share of Transport future” in it and will take all necessary measures for this.” Similar situations, he says, have already happened with Indian partners.
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