Swiggy is set to pilot the use of drones for its instant grocery delivery service ‘Instamart’, Economic Times (ET) reports.
The drones will be used to restore stocks between dark stores in order to complete the middle-delivery layer.
The company clarified that the final deliveries will be carried out by its on-ground fleet itself. The aforementioned pilots will first be conducted in Bengaluru and the Delhi-NCR.
“The pilot is to evaluate the feasibility of drones for the middle mile use case, particularly for Swiggy’s grocery delivery service Instamart. Drones will be used to replenish stocks between seller-run dark stores and from a store to a common customer point,” Swiggy explained in a blog-post.
It added, “A delivery partner will then pick up orders from the common point and deliver them to the customer’s doorstep.”
So far, the food delivery giant has received registrations from 345 different players for its request for proposal (RFP) for the drone delivery service.
The duo of Garuda Aerospace and Skyeair Mobility will be kicking off the pilots almost immediately in Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR respectively.
Additionally, the consortia between TechEagle and ANRA Technologies along with Marut Dronetech have been chosen by Swiggy for this exercise.
