Drone Industry Working to Overcome Barriers to Scale: Kespry and DroneBase Form New Partnership

Drone applications have undeniable benefit for enterprise operations in many industries.  Integrating an entirely new technology into existing workflows, however, is difficult – and scaling operations has been slow.  The drone industry is taking an active role in creating new solutions to ease the way: like the new partnership between drone industry leaders Kespry and DroneBase.

Commercial drone platform Kespry has been thinking creatively about the problem of enterprise operations since their inception.  Kespry was one of the first to offer an easy to use, joystick-free drone platform: vertically integrated to address security concerns and easse of use.  They have offered a broad support organization to help customers to navigate regulations, get Part 107 certifications, and develop drone programs.  They’ve introduced a wide variety of flexible programs, including the Bring Your Own Drone (BYOD) program, which allows companies to use DJI hardware.

DroneBase is the leading commercial drone operations company, providing the pilots and tools necessary for companies to take advantage of drone data without the the burden of learning new technology.   The new partnership between Kespry and DroneBase will allow enterprise to utilize DroneBase to manage their Kespry BYOD deployments – managing the data from many different drone missions in one place.

Kespry CEO George Mathew says the new offering provides the kind of solution that enterprise needs to get optimal benefit from drone data.  “The combination of Kespry and DroneBase delivers scalable aerial analytics platform capabilities for multiple use cases across enterprises,” says Mathew.  “Users don’t have to have survey or CAD experience to benefit from and easily access drone data to monitor, track and reconcile inventory sales data, as well as query volumes of material removed, view elevation profiles, and compare progress to design plans.”

“Together, Kespry and DroneBase are delivering a turnkey solution that empowers customers to focus on their day-to-day business, while we take care of the analytics for them.”

Critical to the solution is the ability of enterprise organizations with multiple sites to gather data wherever they need to – but manage the data in one place to get optimal benefit to the bottom line.  “Multi-site organizations working with Kespry and DroneBase benefit from being able to reduce inventory write-downs and increase profitably,” says Mathew. “Having a drone on each of their sites enables operational and sales teams to constantly perform inventory surveys to ensure they can accurately fulfill sales orders, successfully pass audits, and forecast.”

“Together, Kespry and DroneBase deliver a complete aerial analytics solution with stockpile inventory data centrally stored and managed in the Kespry Cloud.”

The following is a Kespry and DroneBase press release.

Kespry and DroneBase Announce Partnership to Expand Bring Your Own Drone Program to Insurance and Multi-Site Mining and Aggregates Enterprises

Kespry customers can now use DroneBase to manage Kespry drone deployments and pilot missions

MENLO PARK, Calif. – July 31, 2019 – Kespry, the leading drone-based aerial intelligence solution provider, and DroneBase, the leading global drone services company, today announced a partnership to enable insurance, mining, and aggregates enterprises across North America to expand aerial analytics implementation across their worksites.

Kespry’s customers will now be able to leverage DroneBase to manage their Kespry deployments as part of Kespry’s new Bring Your Own Drone (BYOD) program. BYOD includes a new platform pricing model designed to meet the expanding enterprise aerial intelligence requirements of multi-site mining and aggregates companies, as well as large-scale residential and commercial property insurers. The combination of Kespry and DroneBase brings the best of the platform and services worlds together, offering a cost-effective, productive way of using drone-based analytics across the largest insurance, mining, and aggregates businesses.

“We’re very pleased to work with DroneBase and its team of dedicated, aerial intelligence professionals to further expand Kespry insurance, mining and aggregates deployments across the country,” said George Mathew, CEO, Kespry. “The combination of Kespry and DroneBase delivers serious value to companies across North America looking for a partner to help scale their usage of Kespry’s aerial intelligence platform and benefit from its granularly-accurate inspection, inventory management and mine planning capabilities.”

“Together, Kespry and DroneBase offer an advanced solution that serves the demanding needs of complex insurance, mining, and aggregates operations,” said Dan Burton, Founder and CEO of DroneBase. “With our global pilot network in all 50 states and over 70 countries, DroneBase will enable Kespry clients to scale their drone programs across North America without the cost of investing in hardware. By combining our strengths, DroneBase and Kespry will solve a need within these industries.”

Kespry’s BYOD program gives companies flexibility in how they source their aerial data, whether customers use Kespry-sourced drone hardware, DroneBase, or their own existing DJI drone fleet, including the DJI Mavic 2 Pro and the DJI Phantom series. DroneBase can either manage customers’ Kespry deployments or have DroneBase’s global pilot network fly their missions, which can be turned around in 48-72 hours. Kespry now offers a single fee for its platform, including unlimited access to industry-leading, vertically-integrated applications, the Kespry Cloud and AI and ML-based analytics.

Kespry’s aerial intelligence platform is now deployed at 220 mining and aggregates customers that use its platform across 3,311 worksites across North America, with 22,987 missions in 2018 alone. These companies typically use Kespry for inventory management, mine planning, materials management, contractor benchmarking, and boosting employee safety. The Kespry platform is also seeing widespread use across Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 insurance companies.

About DroneBase

DroneBase is the largest global drone operations company, which provides businesses with stunning aerial information to make better, real-time decisions about their most critical assets from the world’s largest Pilot Network. Based in Los Angeles, the company is the trusted, go-to platform for aerial images and data for worldwide enterprise commercial clients across multiple industries such as residential and commercial real estate, insurance, telecommunications, construction, and media. DroneBase has completed over 100,000 commercial missions flown in over 70 countries and in all 50 states. The company was incubated by Y Combinator and has raised funding from FLIR Systems, Union Square Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Pritzker Group, Accel Partners, SV Angel and DJI.

About Kespry

Kespry’s aerial intelligence platform is transforming how organizations capture, analyze and share insights about their business, providing the information they need to accelerate their operations. Purpose-built for industrial use yet simple enough for any user, a wide variety of industries rely on Kespry to solve business-critical problems. Delivering a fully integrated solution from drone data capture to industry-specific analytics, Kespry serves customers across North America, Europe and Australia, including John Deere, Hancock Claims Consultants, Catastrophe Response Unit (CRU), Lehigh Hanson/Heidelberg, and Colas USA.