Indian startup "Botlabs" will fly 1,000 Drones in the "Beating Retreat" ceremony on Saturday evening, as a part of the Light Show marking the conclusion of the week-long Republic Day programmes, Union Minister of State Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh said on Friday.

This will make India the fourth country, after China, Russia and UK, to carry out such a large-scale show with 1,000 drones, he informed.

Botlabs, led by IIT Delhi alumni, is funded by Technology Development Board (TDB) under Union Ministry of Science & Technology

At a demonstration of the Drone presentation on Friday, the Minister interacted with the "Botlabs" StartUp team members at his residence including Tanmay Bunkar and Sarita Ahlawat.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that the Start-Up, Boatlab Dynamics was given an initial seed fund of Rs 1 crore rupees for R&D by the Department of Science & Technology and subsequently another Rs 2.5 crore to scale up and commercialise the first of its kind technological project in India.

Dr Sarita Ahlawat, MD of Boatlab Dynamics said that the Drone Project could become successful only due to full financial support provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology, as the private sector was reluctant to hand-hold the hardware Start-up. She also thanked the engineers associated with the project for letting go of lucrative MNC offers and working on the project.

Dr Jitendra Singh said he was pleased to note that Boatlab Dynamics, which was incubated at Indian Institute of Technology, was able to develop a fleet of  1000 swarm drones in 6 months after getting financial support from TDB.

He also felt proud that that the project was developed indigenously within the country, comprising development of all the necessary components, including both hardware and software such as the flight controller (brain of the drone); precision GPS; motor controller; Ground Control Station algorithms etc.

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