Everyday, especially on working days, my email is bombarded with press releases from struggling startups and established multinationals as they compete to be on the front pages of newspapers and home pages of blogs and news websites. For the news platforms, the desire to populate their pages with stories has led to the lowering of the editorial standards, making many of them to turn into copy and paste platforms instead. Realising this aberration, companies are deploying great PR strategies to develop news contents for the platforms that no longer have time to figure out whether they are promoting a newsworthy statement or just caught in the thick web of corporate PR. Yudala’s drone delivery is one of such.
Few weeks ago, e-commerce companies in Nigeria got everyone talking with their Black Friday offers but one of them, Yudala, took it further when it announced that it has made history by successfully pulling off Nigeria’s first drone delivery. Thinking they got a very good newsworthy story to tell, news platforms ran to the press with the story. Interestingly, several local and foreign platforms published the story including MSN, IT News Africa, Pulse.ng, TechLoy, PC Tech Magazine, Innovation Village among several others. But a closer look at the circumstances surrounding this feat made it appear more as a PR stunt rather than a landmark moment for ecommerce and drone delivery in Africa.
According to the report, Yetunde Lawal, a staff of Access Bank Plc and first time online shopper on Yudala ordered a Nokia Lumia smartphone. Loaded with the product, the drone took off from Yudala headquarters and was followed by onlookers and a camera crew all the way to the address given by Lawal.
You can watch Yudala’s Marketing Manager, Afam Anyika talk about the drone feat below.
Facts about the Drone
TechCity can report that the drone used for the delivery is most likely going to be a Dji Inspire One and you can check out its full features and specifications here.
This drone is mainly used for aerial videography but looking at the video, it seems Yudala somehow successfully mounted a box on it to allow it transport selected products. The drone weighs less than 3kg which means it can only carry stuff that are not weighing above that. Now I understand why they chose to deliver a Nokia Lumia phone and not HP laptop.
Its maximum speed is 5m/s, and, wait for it, it can only fly for about 18 minutes!
The drone is remote controlled and its CE-compliant transmitting distance is just 3.5km which makes long distance coverage literally impossible for this particular drone. But the features are good enough for its original intended purpose – to record videos since no musical videos are longer than 10 minutes neither do movie scene lasts beyond 10 minutes (15 minutes for Nollywood since they talk a lot in the living room).
Drones needed for reasonable order deliveries would require longer operating minutes or hours, a sizable carriage space, maybe with the ability to carry heavier loads (there will always be weight limit), travel unguided and drop the order unaided and securely at the customer’s doorstep. For Nigeria, additional features of interest for delivery drones would be its ability to communicate with the local security man that it was not sent from the village to the city on a mission to kill the owner of the house, knock and open doors, ensure area boys (hooligans) do not intercept the drone and make away with the product as well as avoid tip collection from the customer just like some Konga delivery men and security officers at the Jumia office in Ibadan.
Best attempt yet
The best attempt yet to deliver products using drone is the Amazon Prime Air. Few days after Yudala’s supposed attempt, Amazon revealed the latest prototype of drones it will deploy as part of its Prime Air service using the unmanned aerial devices to deliver packages in under 30 minutes. According to details released by the online retail giant, Amazon says the drones fly under 400 feet and use “sense and avoid” technology to dodge potential obstacles en route to its delivery destination.
Check out the drone in action below:
Even as believable as Amazon’s Prime Air is, many are still calling the project a mere marketing stunt. Now imagine what the rest of the world will say about Yudala and its drones.
Strong points for Yudala’s attempt
Why Yudala’s drones cannot really work
More problems with roll out
The Consensus
The story was published by several foreign media platforms including Metro, Daily Mail, Telegraph and others. But when it was discovered that he did not actually solve the hypothesis, Quartz published a piece describing him as the Nigerian mathematics “genius” who fooled the British media. I felt so ashamed as a Nigerian.
Hahaha now i think Techcityng.com and zipibyte.com should work together in sharing opinion on quality tech worthy news in Nigeria and Africa at large, i saw this story and was like mehh this is laughable.
We should have a weekly video series called “TECHBYTES”
The distance between Yudala’s office and the Access Bank in question is about 5-10 minutes walking distance. Almost across the road.
Its not even up to 5 minutes…… Ok maybe five minutes if you have to look left, look right, look left again before you cross the express. LOL