Two Ball State students have started a service that connects customers with drones.
Junior emerging media major Matt King and sophomore organizational communications major Greg Carbo, who ran together for this year's Student Government Association executive board elections, recently started Droning About, and within its first three days, the business had clients in four states.
The website says the company is "basically the Uber for drones." It focuses on connecting people who need drone services with drone pilots and owners.
The growing popularity of drone ownership also comes with an increase in people seeking out drones. Drones can do anything from shoot footage of a house for sale to analyze crops and inform farmers of which crops might need a certain treatment.
This is not the very first website to try to do this, but King said he stresses to his clients that it is more than a website — it’s a company.
“We call, we make sure clients are happy, we make calls for you and, more importantly, we want it more than anyone in this business," King said.
For $20 a month, pilots can represent themselves on the website with a personal page and prices. In addition to the $20 charge, the company also charges a 7 percent fee for every booking done on the site.
The company also makes sure the pilots have the correct legal insurance and the necessary federal exemptions.
In the United States, it is illegal to do commercial drone work without an exemption. An exemption is most closely comparable to a driver’s license for drones.
If a person without a federal exemption is caught doing commercial drone work by the Federal Aviation Administration, that person may be subject to fines exceeding $1 million.
Because federal exemptions cost around $2,000 and take up to two months to receive, there are currently a little more than 4,500 federal exemptions in the United States, according to the FAA.
These restrictions in the commercial drone department have created a niche market to which Carbo credits Droning About’s success.
“There is no other site that is making it this easy for people to book a drone pilot," Carbo said. “We're getting in front of a huge wave here, and this is going to be the easiest way for people to get that service. We are confident that our team, our family, this kind of company that we're building will be the next huge thing within the drone pilot business.”
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