Talent shortage is a major concern for the emerging drone industry

According to data from staffing company TeamLease Digital, the drone industry has the potential to create close to 100,000 jobs in 5-7 years, directly or indirectly, but the skill shortage will be felt acutely, the experts argued.

“There is a shortage of drone pilots and this shortage is expected to increase as demand increases. Drones will see a lot of use in the next 2-3 years,” said Mugilan Thiru Ramasamy, chief executive and co-founder of Skylark Drones, a software company Which provides drone solutions.

TeamLease’s Vice President and Business Head, Telecom and Engineering Staffing Gautam Vohra said that about 20% of the jobs in the drone industry are for pilots. “There are 750 to 900 job openings listed every month,” Vohra said. Demand is expected to grow by 15-20% next year, he said.

There is a shortage of skilled pilots for land mapping, professional videography and specific use cases, said Ashish Agarwal, vice president, public policy, industry body, NASSCOM.

The industry will need pilots who can operate drones in a variety of conditions, surveyors who will interpret drone maps, and programmers who will need to write artificial intelligence (AI)-based code to operate drones. This will be all the more important when the drone industry starts catering to industries such as real estate, agriculture, thermal imaging, entertainment, logistics and healthcare.

The government plans to address this challenge by introducing courses for skilling in select technical institutions in all states as part of the Drone Shakti initiative announced by the Finance Minister while presenting the budget. Industry experts estimate that there are 15-20 drone schools in the country.

Drone flying training is mostly done through flight simulators. However, they require certification to fly a drone. Earlier, the certification from a drone school was submitted to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) through the Digital Sky platform, after the DGCA issued the Drone Pilot License.

The civil aviation regulator recently changed the rules to allow drone schools to issue remote pilot certificates. DGCA made remote pilot certificate optional for operating drones weighing up to 2 kg for non-commercial purposes, though the certificate would still be required for commercial purposes.

“This will allow DGCA-approved drone schools to issue remote pilot certification through the Digital Sky portal,” explained Agarwal.

Ramasamy said operating the drone in different conditions requires special training.

Operating a drone to monitor a crop, survey a mine, or detect a problem in a chemical plant is different and more challenging than operating a drone for wedding photography or surveillance.

“Pilots need to know the specific surroundings and safety protocols for each industry before operating a drone,” he explained.

There is also a huge demand for skilled drone operators, software engineers, quality inspectors, service engineers and drone engineers, according to Vohra.

However, Karan Kamdar, chief executive officer of 1 Martian Way Industries, which develops software and embedded AI drone solutions, says drones are under-utilised.

“AI is one such segment that can facilitate real-time vision and real-time sensing of the environment. The applications for this in the industrial sector are tremendous. There are many things that can be done with drones such as boilers and chimneys. Testing. Applications with computer vision can play an important role here.”