A farmer who spends close to ₹10 lakh on a drone should not have to watch it sit idle for nine months of the year. That sentence, from AkinAnalytics founder Janaki Pulaparthi, is the entire design brief behind the NIKA2 Kisan — a made-in-India agricultural drone built to earn its keep across seasons, not just during the spraying window.
The machine is the work of AkinAnalytics, a women-led deeptech and defence technology startup from Hyderabad founded by Pulaparthi, a computer science engineer and ISB alumna. Her team builds indigenous drones paired with AI-augmented analytics and digital-twin platforms for agriculture, aquaculture, mining, energy, infrastructure and defence — and NIKA2 is the platform where all of that thinking lands in the field.
NIKA2 Kisan drone at its unveiling in New Delhi. Image: AkinAnalytics
NIKA2 is a medium-category, multi-payload drone: a 16-litre spraying payload and a 12-litre spreading payload, switchable through a quick-change mechanism that lets one aircraft spray crops, spread seed and granules, and even distribute aquaculture feed across fish and shrimp ponds. The company says it can cover roughly three acres in a single sortie, and has built it for the hard bits of Indian farming — terrain-following capability for undulating, sloping land like the tea estates of Shillong and Meghalaya, plus fail-safe systems and night-operation capability.
The launch got a national stage: in August 2026, Union Minister for Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan unveiled NIKA2 in New Delhi and watched the platform demonstrated live — a fitting spotlight for an indigenous agri-drone designed around how Indian farmers actually work.
AkinAnalytics has been proving its drones in real operations well beyond farm fields. In Andhra Pradesh, the company dispersed nearly one lakh seed balls in two days in large-scale afforestation work across forest landscapes. And it runs a DGCA-authorised Remote Pilot Training Organisation at Amalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, turning rural youth into trained drone pilots and entrepreneurs — with special batches opening the controls to women pilots too.
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That field-first approach has drawn serious institutional backing: NIDHI PRAYAS, the Startup India Seed Fund, MeitY SAMRIDH — with MeitY itself participating as an equity investor — and the iDEX defence innovation ecosystem, alongside Stanford Seed Spark. The company was recognised in the Forbes 40 Under 40 India Leaders (2025) list, and is already carrying its Make-in-India drones to Dubai and global markets.
From seed-ball afforestation to minister-stage unveilings, AkinAnalytics is building drones around Indian realities: machines that spray, spread, see and train — and one platform that keeps working long after the spraying season ends.
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