Bang For Your Buck: Challenges of a drone business

Piloting a drone seems easy, but is it really?

Be it on the creative side or handling the technical work, maneuvering the drone is not as simple as it can be done.

Diving in the aerial photography industry for almost eight years, Drone Cult Operation Head, Siddiq Rafee Ramli shared that the main consequence of piloting a drone is the safety of the drone itself.

“Anything can happen, like if the drone falls or hits anything,” said Siddiq.

However, that’s not all. He further broke down the challenges whereby the drone’s safety was not the end of it.

Another aspect of the challenge is the battery life of the machine as even a top-grade drone could last only 50 minutes at most.

Hence, he opined it was not as simple as handling the ground camera and drones were also at risk of getting crashed if the flight was not properly planned.

“Let’s say the drone flew three kilometers away, but the percentage on 20 per cent left, so the drone won’t have enough battery to go back.

“Another challenge would be signals because when you shoot in a high-density environment or area there will be a lot of interference, so that can affect the GPS lock of the drone,” he said.

Drone Cult was established in 2015 by three friends - including Siddiq, and Amir Hamzah Abdul Halim as the Drone Cult Chief Executive Officer and Business Development Head, Abdullah Azzam Jamal.

It all started when they were all involved in parkour activities 10 years ago and shared a passion for photography.

Amir said setting up the company was something unplanned and they received many inquiries after a few of their personal drone videos went viral on social media.