India’s agriculture continues to be a key pillar of India’s economy, providing livelihood support to about 46.1% of the population and contributing 16% to the national GDP, according to the Economic Survey 2024–25 released by the Finance Ministry. Yet, even with its economic weight, the sector has seen minimal technological transformation. Until now.
The agricultural drone market in India is among the fastest-growing regional markets in Asia Pacific and is projected to reach USD 631.4 million by 2030, according to a report by Grand View Research. At the forefront of this transformation is NextLeap Aeronautics, a Bangalore-based company building drones for agriculture and UAV defence systems for national security.
Alvin Anthony, CEO and co-founder at Next Leap Aeronautics, says, “The technological shift in the areas of drones was a kind of revolution that hadn’t happened in the last 50, 60, or even 100 years. It was something new, and that’s when I decided to start Next Leap in India.”
Co-founded by Alvin Anthony (CEO), Thaariq Ahmad (COO), and Gajendra Kashyap (CTO & Head of Systems Engineering), NextLeap Aeronautics has a manufacturing capacity of 150 medium-class drones/month with a team of 50 engineers and domain experts with full-stack R&D and integration capacity.
From Chinese Assembly to Atmanirbhar Agri Drone Manufacturing
“The end users of these drones are farmers, many of whom may not be very literate or familiar with technology,” Alwin explains. “Most companies imported semi-knockdown kits from China, assembling them, getting them certified, and pushing them into the market, without truly understanding the Indian user. We didn’t think that was the right way to do it.”
The Indian Reality: Learning from Indian Farmers
To design a product that works well for Indian use cases and conditions, the NextLeap team conducted extensive market research by speaking directly with farmers. Fom Butch to Bihar, and even to Tripura, they traveled across the country, organizing product demonstrations to raise awareness and understand the ground realities from users.
Alvin explains, “We understood the nuances. Spraying today is either done manually using a 16-litre shoulder-mounted tank for smaller farms or with a tractor boom spray for larger land areas. Both methods are inefficient, time-consuming, and often unsafe.”
Through field visits and feedback, they identified four key problems:
- Labor shortage: Fewer workers are available to handle pesticide/ fertilizer spraying operations.
- High labor costs: Even when labor is available, the job is hazardous, and workers charge high rates that many farmers cannot afford.
- Health risks: Most spraying is done without any safety equipment, exposing workers to harmful chemicals that affect their long-term health.
- Time sensitivity: Pest infestations require immediate action. Manual spraying is slow, taking up to half a day per acre.
Drones addressed all four challenges effectively. “A drone can spray an acre in minutes, with far more precision and consistency than a human,” says Alvin.
“We’re seeing more individual farmers open to using advanced tools,” he says. “Some are purchasing equipment directly, while others are using government subsidies. There’s a clear change in mindset across the sector.”
Designed for Farmers, Not Engineers
Alvin explains, “We realized that our end users may not fully understand technology. So, we’ve made the drone very user-friendly. With just a few presses of a button, it performs the required functions. They don’t need to understand the physics, science, or math behind its operation, or the software that powers it.”
Alvin explains, “We understand the user has to learn in their native tongue to grasp and operate the system without issue. Training documentation is already in Kannada, being converted to Hindi, and will soon cover Malayalam, Tamil, and other South Indian languages.”
Closed Loop Business Model: Sales, Training, Support, & Services
NextLeap’s business model is two-pronged: farmers can either purchase the Leap A10 directly or opt for spraying services offered through trained local dealers.
For drone buyers, NextLeap provides the necessary training, licensing, and certification for operating the drone through a partnered pilot training organization. The training lasts five days, followed by an orientation program specifically for flying the Leap A10 drone.
Alvin explains, “The licensing process for these drones is similar to that of a car, as it’s not a small surveillance or camera drone; it's a large drone. Our customers are given orientation because they may have flown a different drone during their pilot training. The orientation ensures they gain confidence in operating the Leap A10, and to help with this, we let them manually spray 40 acres of land.”
The Leap A10 agricultural drone comes with different pricing packages, starting at ₹4 lakh and going up to ₹8 lakh, depending on the configuration.
For farmers who cannot afford a direct drone purchase, NextLeap offers spraying services through its network of authorised dealerships. These dealers have trained pilots from the organisation who carry out the operations on the ground.
Alvin explains, “If our dealer is within that 40 to 50 kilometer radius, we directly connect the farmer to them. The dealer, often with a team of 5-15 trained pilots, operates drones in nearby regions and offers spraying services at rates ranging from ₹400 to ₹700 per acre, depending on the crop.”
User Acquisition: How NextLeap Reaches Farmers
NextLeap’s user acquisition is a mix of digital outreach and on-the-ground presence. Influencer outreach, social media, grassroots awareness programs, and government collaboration are key areas for generating user interest.
Not surprisingly, YouTube has become a major lead generator for NextLeap today..
Alvin says, “Many of our users call back after seeing our product on YouTube. We receive a lot of interest through these videos. Occasionally, influencers also discover the product organically and reach out to feature it on their platforms.”
Farmer-Driven Feedback Shapes NextLeap’s Product Iterations
What sets NextLeap apart isn’t just engineering, it’s listening.
Alvin credits many of the drone’s innovative features to the “jugaad” mentality of Indian farmers, a knack for finding simple, practical solutions to complex problems that “often turn out to be a game changer for our product.”
“Farmers may not be engineers, but they have a practical logic behind things,” he says. “Once, a farmer pointed out that the drone’s carbon fiber landing gear wasn’t suited for uneven, rocky farmland. He said, ‘Sir, the farm isn’t flat, this won’t last. Use metal instead,” Alvin recalls.
His suggestion turned out to be a turning point. Replacing the carbon fiber wings with metal made NextLeap’s drones more durable in real-world conditions, while cutting costs by upto 5x and making on-field repairs easier and DIY.
Another product iteration came during a demonstration session when several farmers hesitated to take control and were nervous about landing the drone manually, and were afraid of crashing or damaging it.
“One farmer said, ‘Just give us a button.’ Our team took the feedback seriously, and we designed an auto-landing feature. It was a simple engineering solution for us, but it made a huge difference in usability. It turned a stressful moment for the farmers into a smooth and safe experience.”
The Bigger Challenge: Changing Mindsets
But the hardest obstacle for NextLeap wasn’t technical. It was cultural. “Convincing farmers to abandon traditional farming practices that go back generations was tough,” says Alvin. Especially for users who had never seen or interacted with an agricultural drone before.
Building trust and proving the product’s value required sustained efforts.
“To show the drone’s effectiveness over time and the difference we can make, we had to stay with them through an entire cropping season, which lasts about three months. Only after seeing the results does the conversion happen for us.”
While consistent and measurable results over time were key to conversion, drone affordability remains another barrier. High upfront costs for direct agricultural drone purchase (starting at ₹4 lakhs) made it difficult for many farmers and spraying service providers to afford them.
To address this, NextLeap works closely with state governments to launch subsidy programs. But getting these programs approved was a long and complex process, involving repeated discussions with multiple departments over months.
“We struggled a lot to get the subsidy program started,” Alvin says. “We finally launched it in Tamil Nadu, where farmers can now get up to 50% subsidy. In Kerala, we are in the final stages, and in Rajasthan, it took nearly a year of meetings and follow-ups to get approval. We convinced them that drones should be subsidized, just like tractors or harvesters.”
Future of Farming with Smarter Autonomous Drones
Looking ahead, NextLeap is building the second version of its drone with a clear focus on complete indigenization, with every core component coming from Indian suppliers. Their team is working closely with stakeholders to ensure the product is ready for certification by Q3 or Q4 this year.
But for Alvin and his team, the long-term vision goes far beyond hardware upgrades. They are aiming for pilotless drones where the farmer barely needs to intervene.
“We envision a future where the user can simply stay at home,” Alvin says. “The drone will take off from a dock, complete all the spraying, return, refill itself, and go back out. That is the kind of future we are building towards.”
Alvin says, “Indian farms, unlike those in the US or Europe, are full of unexpected elements such as trees, buildings, and electric poles, and navigation requires more than just pre-programmed automation.”
