Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chennai-based Garuda Aerospace, a drone start-up, to power its drones with advanced digital capabilities and bring innovative solutions at scale for enterprises to achieve greater agility, productivity, and overall outcomes.
The US-based IT company and Garuda Aerospace will collectively bring a plethora of end-to-end drone-based management and monitoring offerings for businesses across sectors.
For the agriculture sector, a new offering provides intelligent water and soil management, crop spraying, and aerial planting, among others. For energy and utilities, an aerial intelligence solution helps in asset inspection, storm impact assessment, and fire safety, among other operational areas. In warehouse management, the drones can be used for inventory audits, tracking of products, video surveillance, and even help move lightweight objects.
These drone-based solutions will also enable businesses to achieve their sustainability goals by helping drive efficient use of resources, said a press release issued on Thursday.
The collaboration will provide Cognizant associates across its service lines, including, analytics, the Internet of Things, the opportunity to work on purpose-driven drone projects and real-life use cases. Additionally, associates keen to be trained as drone pilots will have access to Garuda Aerospace’s training facilities.
Globally, Cognizant’s Drone Analytics Information Services practice has a broad array of partners, offering services from flight operations to image processing and advanced business intelligence. The practice also offers services such as drone data capture, data and managed services, big data management, artificial intelligence, application integration, and business consulting, the press release said.
‘Fastest growing tech’
Achal Kataria, Vice President and India Country Head, Cognizant, in the release said that drone services are one of the fastest growing technology segments with the potential to provide extraordinary value to industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, energy and utilities, retail and logistics.”
This collaboration with Cognizant will further enhance the company’s Made in India drones with technologies and catalyse new solutions to help clients and their customers globally, said Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder and CEO, Garuda Aerospace.
Garuda Aerospace has a fleet of 400 drones and a trained team of over 500 pilots in 26 cities across the country. Former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni represents the company as its brand ambassador, the release said.