As geopolitical tensions reshape defence priorities and autonomous systems become increasingly important, ideaForge is expanding beyond surveillance drones into combat platforms, AI-enabled battlefield intelligence and electronic warfare resilience. Co-founder and CEO Ankit Mehta tells Padmini Dhruvaraj from TNIE about the company's evolving strategy, next-generation technologies and why owning critical technology will matter more than quarterly revenue growth.
Yes. Traditionally, ideaForge has not ventured into combat-related solutions. Now, we have decided to move into combat-related solutions and are building capabilities across various relevant categories of drones needed by the armed forces.
That said, we are not looking at runway-operated platforms. Our expertise has always been runway-independent systems. We have backpack-portable drones, rucksack-portable drones, pickup truck-portable systems and now even container-portable logistics drones.
You also mentioned some advanced concepts under development. Can you tell us more?
One of the exciting concepts we are working on is air-launched systems, where one drone launches another drone to engage targets on the ground or even in the air. We are also developing advanced concepts around collaborative autonomy, which we believe will define the future of this industry.
How has customer demand changed over the past year?
The demand has evolved significantly. Earlier, the conversation was largely around building combat mass, having more aerial drones available for operations.
Now, customers are equally focused on the intelligence layer. The question is no longer just how to hit a target, but how to find it, track it and seamlessly integrate targeting with the strike capability. Finding the target is where most of the mission time is actually spent.
Instead of treating surveillance and strike as separate capabilities, customers increasingly want an integrated system that can detect, track and enable engagement without friction.
Electronic warfare has become one of the biggest challenges for modern drone operations.
Following recent operational experiences, it has become clear that electronic warfare resilience is now a critical requirement. At IdeaForge, we have invested heavily in developing capabilities that allow our systems to continue operating even in environments where communication links are jammed or GNSS and GPS signals are spoofed or denied.
These capabilities have already been inducted and operationally used by customers. This level of resilience is becoming an increasingly important differentiator for the industry.
AI is now part of almost every technology discussion. How is it changing drone operations?
AI is going to be extremely consequential.
The first area is edge AI, where the drone itself can detect and highlight important activity for the operator during a mission. Over time, the system may not even need to send every detection to the operator. A drone could detect a target with high confidence and automatically pass those coordinates to another friendly system responsible for the next stage of the mission.
AI is also becoming important at command-and-control centres, where decision-makers have to combine live drone feeds with intelligence gathered from multiple sensors. AI helps analyse all of that information and supports faster decision-making.
Another important application is post-mission analysis. Often, the real value comes from comparing historical and current data to identify changes and build patterns over time. That intelligence is equally important.
Yes, because additional computing always consumes more power.
However, computing hardware is evolving rapidly. Tasks that previously required CPUs or GPUs are increasingly moving to dedicated neural processing units, which perform the same work much more efficiently.
The evolution is similar to smartphones. Every generation of chips becomes more efficient, allowing more computing with the same battery. That is exactly how drone technology is progressing as well.
Fuel cells are promising because they offer the energy density and power density required for larger drone systems.
Sodium-ion batteries, on the other hand, currently have much lower energy density, roughly a third of what is practically required for drone applications, so we do not see them as a near-term solution.
This is one of the most important technology areas for any modern defence drone.
We have built a multi-layered approach. It includes our own CRPA antennas that reject jamming signals, visual inertial odometry, map-matching algorithms that compare live camera feeds with stored maps, and inertial navigation through dead reckoning.
There are also additional capabilities that we cannot disclose publicly. Not every platform carries every technology, but together they provide a very effective solution for our customers.
Defence remains our largest customer segment, but we also have a strong business in geospatial applications.
Our drones are used to create high-quality digital twins for infrastructure, conduct terrain measurements, perform land surveys at the accuracy required for official land records and inspect assets such as power lines.
The civil market continues to grow, although defence demand is currently expanding much faster.
