A Sofia, Bulgaria-based transport and technology company has a new
vision for how all of your online purchases get delivered to you.
It doesn’t have much to do with FedEx or UPS.
“Imagine you invent a new type of cargo airplane,” reads a
top-page introduction on the company’s website. “Unmanned, autonomous and
cheaper to produce and operate than any aircraft in existence. Imagine it can fit
as much cargo as a car can and you can build it in a microfactory wherever its
market is.”
That’s the mission at Dronamics, a company that is hard at
work making these new forms of transport a reality.
Dronamics leaders contend the difference will allow
companies to cut the prices of air cargo travel in half, opening up new trade
routes and broadening markets.
By any account, this kind of engineering is a tall order.
In fact, the company seems to be working so hard on its core
mission that things like web design, to some extent, fall by the wayside, as
evidenced in its admission on the site.
“Because what we do is cutting-edge … things like updating a
website come second to our mission to disrupt aviation,” according to its site. “So your only chance to
learn more is to get in touch with us.”
A business report from SeeNews shows Dronamics received initial funding from an accelerator, Eleven, under a regional program called JEREMIE administrated by European Union agencies.
Svilen
Rangelov, co-founder and head of business development at Dronamics, spoke to Balkan Business Wire
about the
company’s experience scaling up over the past few years.
In characterizing the company’s funding strategy, Rangelov
said Dronamics is entirely privately funded.
He also underscored the central importance of the company’s
mission to make e-commerce better
“We’re specifically building (the vehicles) for e-commerce
fulfillment,” Rangelov said. The vehicles can carry cargo loads
of up to 771 pounds and go as far as 1,500 miles.
As for
Dronamics’s operations from Sofia, he
said low taxes and relatively low labor costs have helped the
company to get where it is today.
“Some of the business environment is very helpful,” Rangelov
said. “It has changed a lot for the better over the years.”
To put the word out about what’s happening at the
company, Dronamics is taking its mission on the road. In 2016, the company
maintained a presence at events like the IATA World Cargo Symposium in Berlin,
the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, and the China Air Cargo Summit in Shenzhen, China.
Dronamics also participates in events within Bulgaria, like the 2016 Webit
Festival in Sofia.
Dronamics, he said, is looking to open a U.S. office in the
future. It’s all part of a plan to get in on the ground floor of an industry
that’s now set to boom. With the rising volume of online purchasing happening
around the world, giants like Amazon are also hard at work integrating drone
strategies into their commerce models. Firms like Dronamics can add to what’s
possible in modern online shopping.
