Indian Startups Are Using Low-Altitude Skyways And Dead Airstrips To Deliver Cargo — Are People Next?

Any country strives to move goods as quickly and reliably as possible within its shores. Longer timelines increase costs, inventory holding costs, fuel use, and, in case of perishable products and pharmaceuticals, spoilage.

On the other hand, businesses get paid sooner if goods reach customers faster, thereby improving liquidity and reinvestment capacity. Companies are also able to sell to distant regions competitively, boosting trade volume. Moreover, manufacturers and exporters favour countries where supply chains are quick and predictable.

India is not particularly quick with goods transport. Trucks do the heavy-lifting, carrying nearly two-thirds of India's freight. Their speeds are generally dependent on the quality of roads on offer; average speeds are well under 50 kilometres per hour (km/h).

Speeds would rise as roads get better, but there's no cure for bad truck driver attitudes, known to be a problem in the logistics sector.

Railways haul about a quarter of India's freight but passenger trains are accorded priority, causing delivery schedules to stretch out into days. Air cargo is the fastest option, but it accounts for less than 1 per cent of domestic freight. That is because it's expensive and largely confined to major metropolitan city airports.

So we have a situation in India where goods that have to be moved hundreds of kilometres can be too costly to send by air, too slow by truck or rail. This compels businesses to hold excess inventory and drains their working capital. It also causes wastage if they deal in perishables.

Nearly 30-40 per cent of fresh produce never makes it from farm to fork, with poor cold-chain logistics a major culprit, according to the Food Corporation of India.

"Most of our freight is by road. That has cost issues. That has issues of late delivery for brands. And that makes it very expensive for e-commerce companies. Logistics is something which is still very expensive if you compare it with China," says Satish Meena, founder of Datum Intelligence, which closely watches and tracks the e-commerce market.

Logistics costs in India have been in the range of 14-18 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) against the global benchmark of 8 per cent, as pointed out by the Economic Survey 2022-23. (Some estimates suggest the percentage is now in single digits.)

India's policymakers are well aware of this logistics reality. Which is why the government is targeting an increase in the average speed of intercity movement of cargo by two to three times from 24 km/h (as of 2022) by 2047.

But there is one other thing that can be done. It's a huge opportunity hidden in plain sight, lying in the rough, quite literally.

India has over 450 airstrips and airports, and fewer than 130 are operational. Many are short, unpaved, and unused. What if these airstrips are awoken from their slumber and put to use to speed up goods transport, raise logistics efficiency, and grow the economy?

Startups are beginning to sense an opportunity here and are daring to turn promise into reality. They are developing a new generation of short take-off and landing cargo planes that can operate out of short, unprepared runways. And if their cargo endeavours work out, they plan to transport passengers too someday.

Aspera’s Autonomous And Cligent’s Electric Aircraft

About three-quarters of a year in the making, Bengaluru-based startup Aspera Industries is taking its first steps towards the bold goal of building India's first autonomous passenger airliner for the world.

A major milestone will be medium-sized autonomous aircraft that ferry high-value goods across India, covering distances of hundreds of kilometres in individual flights, a segment that roughly accounts for 30 per cent of India's domestic freight market.

Each plane would be capable of ferrying cargo weighing about 5-10 tonnes. For reference, aircraft like the ATR 72 freighters carry 5-8 tonnes of cargo per trip. Smaller aircraft, like the Cessna, carry 500 kg to 2 tonnes. The Aspera aircraft will be able to lift off from and land on unprepared airstrips as short as 500-800 metres (m).

"My use case is for middle-mile delivery, so warehouse-to-warehouse, port-to-port deliveries," the founder, Kolkata-born Khushi Mittal, tells Swarajya.

Port to port? "I am making amphibious aircraft, so aircraft that have the capability of taking off and landing both on water and airstrips," she says.

By building autonomous cargo aircraft that can lift 5-10 tonnes off airstrips as short as 500-800 m, the company hopes to create a new layer of freight infrastructure: fast, point-to-point aerial highways that leapfrog India's choked roads and overburdened railways.

Ahmedabad-based Cligent Aerospace is developing fully electric (including hydrogen electric) aircraft capable of transporting 1.5-tonne payloads over distances up to 1,000 km. Their aircraft will be able to operate from airstrips as short as 100-150 m, or even less, with next to no infrastructure set up.

Cligent's aircraft, unlike Aspera's, will be piloted by a human being. But they do have autonomous variants in the works as well.

"Our use case is regional air mobility. For cargo, mid-mile is the best use case that we are targeting," says the founder Harsh Joshi.

Cligent's aircraft will have a maximum take-off weight of around 5 tonnes and come in a size comparable to the Cessna 208 Caravan. They won't require an airport for parking or a proper runway from which to lift off.

"Even below 100 m, you can take off and land, plus you can operate from anywhere. For cargo, you can fly from warehouse to warehouse. The aircraft can also help connect Tier 1, 2, 3 remote and rural areas where no or very less airport infrastructure is there," Joshi says.

This would make Cligent's or Aspera's air cargo vehicles handy, for example, for companies that have small average order values.

"Companies like Meesho, because their average order value is very small, have to move out from third-party partners and take logistics in-house. Because it doesn't make sense if your order value is Rs 300 and you have to pay Rs 150 for just delivering your order," Meena says.

Joshi and team, working out of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar, and backed by IIMA Ventures at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and IIT Mandi Catalyst, are doing the rare thing in India: actually building the aircraft.

Theirs will be a "clean-sheet aircraft," meaning it will be built from scratch. Cligent has developed their own propulsion system, which will be integrated onto the aircraft. There's no other way to do it.

"We cannot convert a current Cessna by just putting our propulsion system in there because these aircraft are designed for a runway. They have to take a minimum runway to get a lift. We don't want that runway. We can take lift at very low speeds, like 40-50 km/h," says Joshi.

"So our design is from scratch. We are integrating our propulsion system. But the avionics part, we are not developing that in-house. We are procuring it off the shelf, which is already certified by DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation)," he adds.

Better Logistics, Bigger Economy

High-altitude economy, on the other hand, is powered by passenger- and cargo-carrying aircraft flying at high, cruising altitudes of 30,000 feet (ft) to 45,000 ft.

"There is a general understanding that just improving the speed of transport and connectivity in the country can improve the economy by 10-15 per cent," Royan says.

"There is a direct linkage with the GDP," Meena explains. "Goods become cheaper if they are being delivered to you at a cheaper logistics cost. Second, the amount of revenue logistics companies can generate by being more efficient is much higher. So overall, from the brand to the marketplace to the consumer, the speed of consuming goods becomes that much faster, and ultimately you'll be ordering more."

The growth of commerce in India is a case in point. It has transitioned in recent years from ordinary commerce to digital or e-commerce to quick commerce. The delivery timelines have squeezed from days to minutes, spurring the growth of the Indian e-commerce market from $30 billion in 2020 to $123 billion in 2024, with expectations that it will reach $345 billion by 2030.

Faster and cheaper goods transport in the low skies would only push along India's economic growth. "The manufacturer, the logistics company, the consumer, and other third-party partners like packaging, and so on, everyone gets a bigger share of revenue if the speed of delivery increases a lot," Meena says.

Mittal's Motivation, Aerospace Innovation

"The entire aerospace and space industry has stagnated for the past 60 years. We have basically made no improvements in technology, and we are just doing what we did 60 years ago," Mittal states emphatically, drawing a distinction between technology upgrades and the introduction of novel, paradigm-changing technologies the world over.

"We are improving efficiency-wise, but we are not making any bold new progress," she says.

This sense of a lack of aerospace innovation over a shockingly long period is a major motivator for Mittal, who took several courses at two different universities, the University of Alberta in Canada and Stanford University in the United States of America (US), before dropping out.

At the University of Alberta, she studied under the "godfather of reinforcement learning," Richard S Sutton. Sutton gave reinforcement learning its theoretical backbone, as well as many of the algorithms powering artificial intelligence (AI) today.

"I went to the University of Alberta because it's the home for reinforcement learning, and that's something that really fascinates me," she says.

Reinforcement learning is at the heart of her high-technology work today. "It is how a child learns," she explains. "How a baby learns is by being in the natural world, learning from people, like learning languages from people, how they speak, how they talk, and what kind of environment they are in really affects them as a person. That's exactly what reinforcement learning is," she adds, noting that "that's how ChatGPT was initially trained."

She plans to teach her 'child,' her very first autonomous aircraft in the making, similarly. The plan is to purchase a two-seater aircraft and retrofit it with autonomous controls.

During flight training, all the data will be scooped up to foster continuous learning. "You gather all the data and then you train models on top of it to learn from it. That's basically it," says Mittal.

Will reinforcement learning help accomplish faultless flights? "It's something we still have to figure out. But one precedent we have is from self-driving cars. What we are trying to do is essentially solve the self-driving car problems but for airplanes," she says.

The founder believes that the autonomous airplane is a much easier thing to pull off than a self-driving car. "For example, self-driving cars use vision models. They have to have cameras and see what the road looks like. We don't need vision models. There's nothing to see in the sky. It's wide, empty," she says.

"Autonomy in the air is much, much easier because, unlike roads, you just have a straight line that you need to follow. Even simpler techniques than RL (reinforcement learning) can help. Even passenger aircraft, most of the time, work on autopilot. So the tech is de-risked to a large degree," Paras Chopra, an entrepreneur who runs the highly sought-after AI research lab Lossfunk in Bengaluru, tells Swarajya.

Mittal was handpicked by Chopra recently to join his six-week Lossfunk residency programme. "When Khushi broke down why she picked up logistics, it just seemed very logical. Because the safety requirements are much less versus carrying humans. So it seemed like she and the team she is working with had thought this through. And that just increased my confidence," said Chopra, who believes "it's not just about being ambitious" but also about "having a realistic chance at following through on what you want to get done, and it seems like she has a good chance."

That's not to say she doesn't have her work cut out. "For us, the problem is more on the side of data, like how good are your flight controls able to manage wind disturbances? Or, for example, we want to land on and take off from water. How are you able to manage waves? Or if a sensor gives you wrong data or the sensor goes off, how are you able to redundantly manoeuvre accordingly? So it's a very point-to-point-based problem at the moment. I do think that reinforcement learning could be very helpful for us in terms of really refining the control system," Mittal says.

Royan outlines the challenges of operating on water. "Even if you see landings on a normal runway in subnormal weather, there is a thing called side wind, which means the wind which is blowing from the perpendicular side of the runway. It can literally flip an entire aircraft down," he says.

The conditions can be even harsher over the oceans. "When we go to the ocean side, if there is a tailwind all the time, it's like a high windy area, and also there is no smooth surface for landing. There are always sea waves coming in and out. That is too much of a problem," he says.

Even as she navigates these challenges, Mittal will try to step up the autonomy levels on her aircraft. Currently, her aircraft is at autonomy level three among the six levels from zero to five, a classification inspired by the automotive autonomy levels set out for self-driving cars. Level three roughly corresponds to a stage where the system can manage most flight phases but hands control back in complex situations. Real commercial aircraft are roughly in levels two to three, while military drones and experimental systems are pushing into levels four to five.

"Majority of the drone companies are working in last-mile delivery to deliver goods for e-commerce or pharmaceuticals. But the crux of any logistics or supply chain is the mid-mile segment. If you can optimise your mid-mile, whether it is by air, truck, or any other means of transport, you can save time in last-mile delivery, and the cost as well," Joshi says, explaining a major pain point for logistics companies today and why he is focused on the mid-mile segment.

Cligent is able to deliver a cost advantage compared to conventional air cargo, thanks to the use of electric propulsion. "If you are comparing current air cargo prices with our aircraft, it is 5x lower; plus you don't have to go to the airport, so the airport hangar charge is cut. And since we use a battery, we don't have to worry about the moving parts of an engine," says the founder.

Conventional air cargo delivery costs about Rs 50 per kg, per km, whilst the estimate for Cligent's offering is just Rs 10-12. Trucks are cheaper at Rs 4-5 per kg, per km, and carry 20-30 tonnes on their back, but they face major drawbacks.

As Joshi notes, "road transport often deals with unpredictable driver behaviour and struggles to reach remote or hilly areas. In the North East, deliveries can take 15-20 hours."

Adding to these challenges are inefficiencies in logistics handoffs, particularly during mid-mile and last-mile transfers. A McKinsey report estimates that up to 19 per cent of logistics costs, roughly $95 billion annually in the US, are due to poor communication, information loss, and delays during these blind handoffs between delivery partners. While these numbers are for the US, the same principle of cost leakage due to handoff inefficiencies applies to India too.

The need for regional air cargo is also becoming urgent in places like Rajkot. The city's exporters, especially in silver and imitation jewellery, ship around 10-12 tonnes daily via Ahmedabad, incurring high costs and long turnaround times. Rajkot International Airport is now set to begin cargo operations, signalling the rising demand for reliable mid-mile air cargo.

Cligent wants to jump in here to deliver faster, more reliable, and cost-efficient mid-mile solutions where trucks and traditional air cargo fall short.

Conventional air cargo is not a viable alternative for regional or smaller logistics players. "If you try to fly 20-30 tonnes by air, then you have to consider the Boeing 737, whose price is $120 million," Joshi says with a laugh, the unfeasibility of this prospect self-evident.

Not only is conventional air cargo expensive in India; it also builds up dependency among regional logistics payers on just a few conventional aircraft like IndiGo and SpiceJet that carry cargo in their bellies.

Here is where Cligent intends to come in and land for the mid-mile rescue. "If you have a small aircraft like ours, which has a capacity of 1.5-tonne cargo and can go 1,000 km, it's sufficient for regional logistics companies. They can take three to four flights every day from their warehouse to warehouse, like from Ahmedabad to Rajkot. They don't need to go to the airport," Joshi says.

Why Aircraft Over Drones

Drone companies in India are proliferating, and some of them are inevitably developing cargo drones, since drones lend themselves easily to this application. The ePlane Company, for example, which is incubated at IIT Madras, is testing a cargo plane for metro cities. Scandron is another player with a cargo drone offering among several others.

So why not deploy these drones for cargo delivery rather than develop aircraft, autonomous or otherwise, to move goods?

The primary reason is that drones are not well-placed to execute mid-mile deliveries, the very segment that Mittal and Joshi are trying to tame. "Drones, like the quadcopter or the multicopter, cannot do mid-mile. The reason is power consumption. Because you are taking a lift against gravity and then you are again going forward. You can go up to 50-100 km, but not up to 1,000 km," Joshi says.

"Drones can do the last-mile," he adds. "If they have to do mid-mile, they have to have fixed-wing drones. A fixed wing is the only option."

Technically, drones are capable of flying hundreds of kilometres, covering segments usually dominated by fixed-wing aircraft. However, regulations around beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations in India are still not clearly defined. At present, most long-range drone flights are permitted only for experimental or trial purposes, which limits their commercial viability.

The regulatory framework is evolving, and it ultimately depends on the DGCA to formalise these rules. More such guidelines, covering areas like airworthiness, safety corridors, and integration with crewed aviation, are already in the pipeline. But until they are in place, commercial operations at scale remain constrained.

Global Mid-Mile Cargo Aircraft Play

Much of today's global fleet is old: many Boeing 737-300/400 freighters, ATR 42/72Fs, and Saab 340Fs are about 20-30 years old, costly to maintain, and increasingly out of step with new emissions and noise regulations due in the late 2020s. Boeing's 2024 market outlook predicts over 2,000 new freighters under 20 tonnes will be needed by 2043, mostly to replace these ageing turboprops and small jets.

The post-pandemic period has also changed the game. During 2020-2022, air cargo demand surged, passenger planes were grounded, and dozens of small passenger aircraft were converted to carry freight. Now, belly cargo capacity has returned to passenger flights, rates have softened, and operators are under pressure to cut costs, spurring interest in purpose-built, more efficient mid-mile aircraft.

Technology is pushing the category in new directions. Companies like Reliable Robotics and Xwing are trialling fully autonomous Cessna Caravans with the US Federal Aviation Administration, aiming to cut crew costs on feeder routes. Electric and hybrid-electric designs like the Eviation Alice, Beta Alia, and Heart ES-30 among them are promising lower fuel burn and quieter operations for short hops.

Poseidon Aerospace is building autonomous sea planes that fly just above the water's surface to transform regional cargo logistics. It says it's "developing a middle ground" between 'slow oceanic freight' and 'expensive air freight.' It has demonstrably low cost of freight as compared to conventional regional air freight around regions like Hawaii, Greece, and the Caribbean region.

Geography is a key factor too. The US uses FedEx and UPS "Feeder" networks of Caravans, ATRs, and Saabs to serve small-town America. Australia's Toll Freight and Regional Express connect mining towns and coastal communities. In Africa, Astral Aviation flies Embraer 120s and Caravans into small airfields.

So in countries where infrastructure is uneven or distances are awkward for trucking, mid-mile aircraft are not just an option.

India too faces an urgent need for small cargo aircraft, driven by factors such as hundreds of underutilised airstrips, the rapid growth of e-commerce, and the limitations of road transport. While globally the focus is on modernising mid-mile fleets, in India the challenge is to build them from the ground up.

Leading logistics players worldwide, including FedEx, operate a significant portion of their fleets with lightweight aircraft, precisely the category Cligent is developing, highlighting both the scale of global adoption and the opportunity waiting to be unlocked in India.

So it's great that India is getting started. "If you see outside India, we have seen a lot of experimentation on automated vehicles for delivery. That is still very difficult in our case because our traffic is still not that easy to navigate. So that's why these startups that are focusing on automated, low-cost air cargo transport might provide a better option for companies," says Meena, who believes that, over and above the improvements in ground-based logistics this past decade, "things are starting now on the air side, and over the next five to seven years, we will see most of the action in this space."

Startups Line Up For Take-Off

Mittal is beginning to build her test autonomous aircraft at a small private airstrip in Jangamakote, Chikkabalapur district, about 40 km from Bengaluru. (Jangamakote, notably, is where the Karnataka government intends to build a deep tech park.) It's a "green zone," therefore, one doesn't require permission here to operate drones weighing up to 500 kg in airspace stretching up to 400 ft, as per Drone Rules, 2021.

While she intends to make Aspera a vertically integrated company someday, Mittal is currently relying on off-the-shelf components.

"Everything is off the shelf at the moment. We are writing code on top of it. Landing is the trickiest part for us. So we are writing code for landing. But when we build our own system, I think we might end up building our own flight controller, just not right now. There are very good autopilot components available, like Garmin systems that are currently being used in commercial aircraft as well, but we have to write code on top of it to make it customisable to our aircraft and our specific needs," she says, clarifying that engines won't be something they'll make in-house, whereas things like the aircraft structure are a certainty for in-house manufacturing.

Since she is developing an amphibious aircraft, Mittal is eyeing South East Asia for her first flight trial, countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Maldives.

"These countries basically run on sea planes and boats, so they have a burning need for what we are trying to do. And most of the warehouses in these countries are of third-party logistics suppliers like the DHLs and FedExes of the world. So we are applying to sell these aircraft to them," she says.

She is speaking with a number of companies that have shown interest in her product; however, Mittal believes a lot more work is left to be done.

"Not just for LOIs (letters of intent); LOIs and pre-orders are obviously a very important part from a company perspective. But what we really want to understand is the unit economics behind these aircraft. Because we are designing from scratch, we want to design on the basis of what the customers need. So we want to really understand the per-tonne, per-mile cost that exists at the moment for domestic and international travels, and what is the number that we have to beat, and what is the number that we can realistically come down to," she says.

"I do think that with the advances in composite technology, better carbon-fibre solutions, better fibreglass solutions, etc," she adds, "I think we can make a very, very light aircraft that reduces our per-tonne, per-mile costs."

Certification might prove to be a challenge for Mittal. As Joshi explained, the beyond-visual-line-of-sight framework is yet to be laid down in India. Besides, there will be limitations around where she can fly.

According to Joshi, "Even if you're flying in the green zone, you cannot go above 120 m. To fly in the yellow zone or red zone, you will need permission. You can take permission either from the digital sky platform, or, in the case of a red zone, from the SP (Superintendent of Police) of the city to fly your craft."

Cligent is already in the advanced stages of deployment with aircraft ready for cargo delivery. The company has secured early customers, some of whom are also investors, who are set to procure aircraft for warehouse-to-warehouse transport this year.

The company is also in talks with major logistics operators for broader adoption of its mid-mile cargo aircraft. With its technology demonstrator preparing to fly from the Mehsana airstrip in Gujarat this year, the company is now also eyeing Southeast Asian markets for its next phase of deployment.

Going From Cargo To Passengers

Moving goods will not be all for Aspera or Cligent. Both companies aspire for much bigger things.

"My big-picture plan is to have an autonomous passenger airliner in the next 50 years. And my way to think about it was whatever gets me closer to it. I want to see an autonomous passenger airliner coming out of India. The dream is to make the next Airbus here," Mittal says.

She believes air cargo will be a great stepping stone for passenger transport ultimately. "This retrofit mechanism seemed like the fastest way to prove that we can get there (to an autonomous airliner). Because this (cargo delivery) is a tangible proof of technology that we can have in the next six months. So that seemed the ideal way for me to go ahead and do something big in this industry," she says.

Cligent too is developing aircraft for both cargo and passenger mobility. For the latter, Joshi sees the need for a means to move passengers between rural and remote areas. "The aircraft category remains the same. Our aircraft category maximum take-off weight will be 5 tonnes. Whether you take cargo or passengers, your aircraft category won't change," he says.

But some modifications to the aircraft would be in order. "For cargo aircraft, certification is less because you don't have to make a complex chamber. In passenger aircraft, you have to develop the pressurised chamber inside the aircraft. So the first version would be cargo, and the second would be passenger mobility," Joshi says.

The real test will come when these aircraft move from prototypes to production lines. If successful, they will unlock a new level for India's aviation space. Sometimes, the best way forward is up.