Malaysia’s drone ecosystem is gaining much attention in the region, with the government fully backing the scene supporting it with incubators and sandbox from MaGiC, MTDC and MDeC, the sector can be the next high valued industry for the country.
Showing support for innovators, the recent seed round for Poladrone raised RM18 million led by Wavemaker Partners, one of Southeast Asia’s leading venture capital firms including Malaysian Technology Development Corporation (MTDC), ZB Capital Limited (a Hong Kong-based principal investment firm), and angel investors.
Noting the growing demand for drones in the agriculture sector, Poladrone launched Oryctes in August 2020 as the world’s first precision spot spraying drone to introduce an efficient and automated solution to the oil palm industry.
In oil palm plantations, rhinoceros beetles are known as a serious pest to immature palms, affecting their photosynthetic ability and considerably reducing fruit yield. Frequent pesticide spraying exercises are required to maintain plant health. In Malaysia, spraying activities using knapsack sprayers and tractors are both labour-intensive and detrimental to workers’ health. The labour shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of the technology and Poladrone has quadrupled their team from 20 to over 80 in less than a year to cope with the demand.
Cheong Jin Xi, Founder, and CEO, added that the funding round will be used to scale up operations to better serve customers across the region, and to attract top talents to further improve their products.
The startup is also setting up Service Centres in agricultural towns offering “Sales, Service, and Spare Parts” in Malaysia and Thailand, and is looking to expand to other markets in the region, specifically Indonesia.
“Many of our customers rely on drones to earn a living, and downtime is detrimental to their livelihood. As most operations happen away from metropolitan areas, our Service Centres will provide better accessibility to customers to quickly maintain or repair their equipment. We are extremely excited to partner with the team at Wavemaker and MTDC who share the same vision, putting our customers’ needs at the heart of our growth strategy,” said Cheong.
Gavin Lee, General Partner at Wavemaker Partners was impressed with Poladrone which is working with eight out of 10 of the biggest palm oil plantations in Malaysia.
MTDC however looks at the investment that will spur the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution in the agriculture sector in line with the National 4IR Policy and the recently launched 12th Malaysian Plan. It believes the technology offered by Poladrone would be able to reduce the reliance on foreign workers especially in the palm oil industry while at the same time help increase the number of knowledge workers in the drone industry.
