Akihabara News (Tokyo) — DroNext, a firm based in Sakai city, Osaka, is already making a mark with its drone services, and it is moving toward an ambitious and innovative plan to enter the eVTOL (flying car) industry as well.
Founded by Asa Quesenberry in April 2019, DroNext’s business encompasses both aerial drones and remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV). The firm doesn’t manufacture the hardware, but it has found its niche providing to its clients with Hardware as a Service (HaaS).
“We’ve had a lot of success acting as a bridge business where foreign companies are looking to work in Japan,” Quesenberry told Akihabara News in an exclusive interview. “Maybe they need drones for one of their developments or a project, but due to language barriers or any of the problems you would name with access to the Japanese market, it’s quite difficult.”
Inspired by the fact that Japan is a maritime nation, a substantial part of DroNext’s business focuses on ROVs, which are employed for jobs such as marina or harbor inspections, or inspecting ships that have parked at Japanese ports.
Quesenberry explains that his firm believes in “spreading the wealth,” by which he means that DroNext maintains a wide network around the nation of pilots and others who work with the company when there are jobs to be done in regional locations, far from Osaka.
Although the current business has achieved some degree of success, Quesenberry is looking carefully at current trends in the drone industry and projecting both the areas where demand may gradually fall off and the opportunities which may open up in the future.
One factor he recognizes is that the longterm future for drone pilots may not be so bright. Increasingly, he expects the next generation of drones to become autonomous, meaning the need for direct human guidance will gradually be reduced.
He also has his eye on the potentially lucrative eVTOL market, and is in fact planning a fundraising round in the coming months to begin to shift DroNext towards that industry. But his strategy is a bit off the beaten path.
“Everyone’s trying to build the day-to-day car, the eVTOL flying passenger car,” he explains. “Very few people are focused on infrastructure.”
While the specifics are still under development, Quesenberry and his team are drawing up plans for the DroNext SmartHub, which will be a “vertiport” (a port for eVTOLs and drones) that will become a beehive for eVTOL manufacturers, electric charging companies, drone logistics companies, and retail marketers, much like the train stations of contemporary Japan.
Quesenberry believes that building out this kind of urban infrastructure for eVTOLs and drones, incorporating landing and service facilities for multiple vehicle manufacturers and service providers, is the best way to ensure that they become part of our lives in the coming years and decades.
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