India, May 24 -- From leisure and hobby to strategic applications in agriculture and defence, the use of drones has expanded manifold in India in the past few years. However, with manufacturing still heavily reliant on imported components, there is a huge dissonance between the potential and realities of the country's drone sector.

While the government has undertaken steps such as an import ban and launch of production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to encourage local manufacturing to foster self-reliance, the ecosystem faces glaring gaps such as fragmented supply chains, import dependency on critical components, underfunded R&D, lengthy processes and lingering quality perceptions.

This is because policy announcements to promote the dron...