FROGS passenger drone
Sometime in 2017, at an event organised by the Amikom university in Jogjakarta in Central Java, UMG Myanmar’s co-owner and CEO Kiwi Aliwarga, challenged the participants to build a big passenger drone.
Asro Nasiri, an avionic engineer with years of experience, emerged from the participants to accept the challenge.
Soon, Aliwarga and Nasiri found themselves working together on a startup that develops not just passenger drones but also other unarmed aerial vehicles that could be used in various industries.
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“The duo ended up developing drones for the agri and logistics sectors, besides transportation,” says Alexander Ludi, who joined Aliwarga and Nasiri in the management team a few months later.
Born in Jakarta, Aliwarga (Founder and CEO) graduated from the Institute of Technology of Indonesia in 1992 with a Degree in Industrial Engineering and also holds a Master’s in Civil Engineering from the Asia Institute of Technology in Thailand.
Nasiri (co-founder and COO) has 13 years of experience as an Avionic Engineer and is Director of Innovation Centre at AMIKOM.
Christened FROGS (which stands for Flexibility, Relentless, Objective, Growth and Solution), the brand is owned and operated by Jogjakarta PT. Inovasi Solusi Transportasi Indonesia.
Primarily, the firm designs surveillance, cargo, sprayer and passenger drones. The sprayer and surveillance ones help in smart precision farming, whereas cargo drone is meant for the logistics industry.
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Sprayer drones are already in the use and have become FROGS’s “bread and butter”, says Ludi. Surveillance drones, on the other hand, are useful in times of pandemic to ensure that people follow specific protocols.
Cargo drones, dubbed as an ideal solution to transport and distribute medical supplies while minimising physical contacts, is not hit the market yet.
Passenger drones, considered to be the future of transportation, could be used to ferry passengers from one city to another. The air taxi, whose test run was successfully done early this year, will have a capacity to carry up to two passengers and can fly at 100 km per hour. It will have a 30 minutes flight time.
“We had our preliminary discussions with the DGCA for certification and registration and are awaiting its approval to kickstart operations, hopefully in 2023-24. We want to be the first in the country to operate an air taxi,” Ludi tells e27.
FROGS plans to launch operations in the new capital city of Kalimantan in Borneo Island. “As you may already be aware, our country is in the process of relocating its capital to Kalimantan, which is being developed as a smart city. We already have the infrastructure ready and will use some the nearby airports/helipads to run our operations,” Ludi as sharing more details.
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Since its inception in 2018, FROGS has received a round of seed funding from UMG Idealab. The founders are now receiving interests from global investors, says Ludi.
“For a high-tech startup like us, we always need not just funding but also network, contacts, mentorship. We also hope to partner with the government for subsidies,” he concludes.
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Image Credit: FROGS.
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