New Delhi: Indian drone manufacturer, Zuppa, claims that their drones are more dependable as they cannot be hijacked primarily due to teas they are manufactured locally without any Chinese spares in them.
Earlier this year, on August 23rd, an Indian army drone that was flying close to the border in the north was reportedly hijacked by Pakistani authorities. The reason, Zuppa claims, was because the drone was made through Chinese technology and hence was vulnerable.
Investigations revealed that most of the drones being used by the army were assembled with Chinese components and were vulnerable to being hijacked. Ever since there has been an emphasis on indigenous manufacturing as it would not compromise on security.
Orders for drones were kept on hold. Prior to the August incident of hijacking Zuppa I(on July 7th) had claimed that the components of its drones were all manufactured in India and were suitable for security and surveillance.
“We had warned the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Civil Aviation and National Security Council Secretariat about the possibility of such an incident happening,” said Sai Pattabiram, Founder and MD of Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies Limited.
Major components, for which many companies were using Chinese products, in the case of Zuppa are being manufactured locally. This includes the PCB which is equivalent of the motherboard and uses indegenous components including the micro processor chip. Even the code or software layers are patented by Zuppa’s computing architecture.