National Insurance offers BVLOS drone insurance coverage to Asteria Aerospace

The insurance coverage is exclusively designed for Asteria's DGCA approved consortium to conduct 100 hours of BVLOS test flights in a pre-defined airspace approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, TropoGo said. A consortium includes drone operators, unified traffic management (UTM) providers, among others.

State-owned general insurer National Insurance Company has issued the country's first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone insurance coverage to Asteria Aerospace, a manufacturer and operator of unmanned aerial vehicles. National Insurance is providing the coverage through Itus Insurance Brokers using deep-tech startup TropoGo's platform.

TropoGo, which specialises in risk assessment of aerial mobility, has worked closely with the insurance player in offering the product. BVLOS drone operations are the next frontier in drone-technology to deliver multiple mass benefit use cases like agriculture, disaster management, healthcare, infrastructure monitoring, among others.

The insurance coverage will safeguard the risk of any loss or damage to third-party due to any accident during the test flights, TropoGo said in a release. The insurance coverage is exclusively designed for Asteria's DGCA approved consortium to conduct 100 hours of BVLOS test flights in a pre-defined airspace approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, TropoGo said.

A consortium includes drone operators, unified traffic management (UTM) providers, among others. The DGCA has approved 20 drone consortia, including Asteria Aerospace, for conducting BVLOS drone trials in a sandboxed environment.

"We have been seeing increasing drone adoption in the last few months, be it COVID control, AMPHAN disaster management or locusts control. We can also see 'Beyond Visual Line of Sight' operations will further accelerate the innovation especially for medicine delivery and in agriculture in the coming years," National Insurance's chief regional manager Shubhankar Pain said. Besides Asteria Aerospace, National Insurance is also providing similar coverage to the DunzoAir consortium.

"With this collaboration, TropoGo is well-positioned to support every insurance need of India's thriving drone ecosystem, be it Line of Sight Operations or Beyond Visual Line of Sight experiments. "We will continue to collaborate and co-innovate to bring smart, affordable and fit for purpose financial products for the Indian drone community," TropoGo founder Sandipan Sen said in the release.

TropoGo is the platform for drone operations and a carrier of the outsourced functions of Itus Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd.