For more updates follow Grant Thornton Bharat on WhatsApp
Shared low-altitude airspace infrastructure for drone services in India’s metro cities
India's metro regions are ready for the next stage of drone-enabled services, but the low-altitude airspace above them is not. As the range of applications for drones expands to include deliveries, healthcare logistics, emergency response, and infrastructure monitoring, cities will need a shared digital layer to detect, manage, and coordinate drone traffic management.
This whitepaper examines the strategic imperative, market opportunity, regulatory environment, social and economic impact, and financial case for a shared low-altitude airspace. It also proposes a practical city-level implementation model that brings together public oversight with private-sector investment, technology, and operating capabilities.
India has over 38,500 drones on its books and nearly 40,000 certified remote pilots. That's a massive ecosystem in the making.
The assessment covers eight metro areas with a combined population of some 127 million in 2027.
Under the accelerated adoption scenario, annual drone deliveries in these metros would be around 23m by 2035 and nearly 132m by 2045.
The same scenario yields some 361,000 drone flights per day across the eight metros by 2045, with some 14,500 drones in the air at any one time during peak hour.
Urban delivery will be the primary source of flight volume, with healthcare, emergency response, and public safety applications having the potential to deliver substantial public value.
Shared airspace infrastructure can provide the combination of surveillance sensors, resilient communications, drone ports, a city command centre and digital UAS traffic management services.
India's major cities are seeing massive population growth and a corresponding spike in demand for digital commerce and logistics, all of which is being hampered by a severe lack of road infrastructure. In many of the metros, a 10km journey can take over 30 minutes. This obviously impacts the delivery of goods as well as the movement of blood, lab samples, medicines, and emergency equipment. Drones won't be a replacement for road transport, but can be a useful complementary channel for the movement of light, time-critical, and urgent goods.
The missing piece is a common system for the low-altitude airspace infrastructure. Individual operators can obviously run their own fleets, but city authorities will require a much broader picture, and multiple operators will need a safe way to share busy urban routes. A city network would provide detection and tracking, a common operating picture, drone traffic management, and controlled data sharing with the appropriate authorities.
Delivery is likely to be the area of highest recurring demand for metro airspace. India's quick commerce market was reportedly processing 7.8 million orders per day by early 2026, and the country had over 270 million online shoppers in 2024. The whitepaper's demand model takes the metro population, middle-class growth, online shopping penetration, and delivery activity and converts them into estimates of potential drone-eligible orders under both accelerated and conservative adoption scenarios.
Delhi NCR is by far the largest potential market (32.7 million deliveries per year in 2045 under the accelerated adoption scenario), followed by Mumbai MMR and Bengaluru at 18.4m and 17.2m respectively. Demand is, however, spread across all eight metros, so a network-based approach is the way to go rather than one based on individual operators' infrastructure.
The international evidence is strongest in healthcare and emergency logistics. There are documented programmes that have demonstrably reduced the time required to move blood, vaccines, medical samples, and defibrillators. Indian pilots have seen the same effect with vaccine flights in Manipur, reducing from several hours by road to under 15 minutes by drone.
The broader benefits would include improved logistics reliability and lower delivery costs (a single operator can look after several aircraft), skilled employment, demand for domestic manufacturing, and several targeted reductions in road travel. The report's illustrative case suggests that drone deliveries could avoid some 139m km of road travel per year across the 8 metros by 2035, rising to some 791m km by 2045 under the accelerated adoption scenario. The actual benefits will, of course, be a function of route design, payload, the electricity mix, and the extent to which road travel is replaced by drone flights.
The proposed network is a hybrid of physical and digital assets: surveillance sensors, communications links, drone ports, charging and support infrastructure, a city airspace command centre, and a common digital platform. Given the scale of investment required over the long term (for systems integration, ongoing operations, and regular tech refreshes), the report recommends establishing a city airspace SPV through a competitive public-private partnership.
Under a DBFOT (design, build, finance, operate, and transfer) structure, the SPV would finance, deploy, and operate the network in accordance with the specified performance criteria. The public authorities would provide the sites, coordinate the various statutory interfaces, and provide the anchor demand through the public sector. The sovereign functions (aviation regulation, airspace control, security, enforcement, and counter-drone) would remain with the relevant government authorities.
A proper urban drone infrastructure can enable faster public services and commercial logistics and set the stage for advanced air mobility in the future. The opportunity isn't just about allowing more drones to fly. It's about creating a shared system that makes high-volume operations visible, coordinated, safe, and scalable. The cities that put governance in place, secure strategic sites, and start with controlled deployment will be best positioned to benefit from India’s emerging low-altitude economy.
India’s transportation and logistics sector has undergone a phase of structural transformation in 2025, driven by policy reforms, accelerated infrastructure commissioning, and expanding digital integration.
The current conflict in the Middle East poses the most profound impact on aviation since the pandemic.
As India’s aviation industry scales up, safety, cybersecurity, and innovation are becoming critical. Explore the trends redefining air travel.
