Drone deliveries work out to be much cheaper than road-based deliveries. If you couldn’t come to terms with this fact, then you should understand that a single drone operator can handle as many as 10 drones simultaneously. Moreover, drone deliveries can be made much faster as the same can deliver to customers with 2 miles of radius in as quickly as 3 minutes at a relatively lesser cost.
As of now, there are not many drone delivery service providers but the Irish startup Manna is one of them. Its platform lets online meal ordering platforms, dark kitchens, and restaurant chains to deliver meals to local communities within no time for a lower cost.
Secures €2.7M funding
The Irish drone delivery startup Manna that partnered with Flipdish just announced that it secured $3 million (nearly €2.7 million) seed funding led by Dynamo VC, a logistics-focused fund. This brings the overall funding raised by the company to a total of $5.2 million (nearly €4.6 million).
With the new investment, the company is in plans to support its commercial growth. It is said that Manna will offer drone delivery service to takeaways and restaurants. It is all set to begin the service in Dublin in March 2020 but the exact location remains undisclosed. Previously, it was expected to debut operations in 2019.
Manna: An insight!
Founded in 2018 by Bobby Healy, Manna has a fleet of drones that will deliver food to consumers directly from the restaurants. The food will be inside the cargo area of the drone during the duration of the flight. The drone will hover nearly 10m above the ground and the delivery will be lowered to the person on the receiving end on a biodegradable linen string. The delivery drones of Manna have a range of nearly 40 sq km from the restaurant base.
Roadblocks ahead!
If the delivery drone concept works well, then the service will remove delivery vehicles from the roads by offering a more efficient way to deliver goods including food. However, to bring this into reality, Manna has to face several roadblocks.
Initially, Manna planned to test the drone delivery service in one location before expanding it by the end of next year. But it needs to be acknowledged, which is a time-consuming task. While it is facing problems in gaining the necessary approvals to get its service running due to consumer privacy, Healy notes that Manna might not have privacy-related issues as its fleet do not have any recording equipment.
Stock photo from IgorZh/Shutterstock
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