Drone delivery: How Yudala’s PR stunt misled Nigeria’s tech media

Paul Adepoju

9 years ago

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

The only strong point about the Yudala feat which is highly commendable would be the fact that the company’s creative directors were curious – and brave – enough to give drone delivery a trial considering the fact that the process was too simple to be truly adaptable in a chaotic ecosystem like Nigeria.

There is probably a lover of drones among the members of Yudala team who believes a drone could be used to deliver products ordered on the platform. There are a number of industries where the application of drones is becoming dominant, they include military operations, agriculture and cinematography.

This development should also stimulate dialogues on the deployment of locally adaptable innovations and technologies to foster service delivery and improve delivery time.

Why Yudala’s drones cannot really work

There are a number of reasons why those that looked at Yudala’s drones will tell you that it cannot work in its present form. The first reason, which is commonsense, could be figured out if you looked at the video close enough. With the way the Yudala drones work, they would need at least someone to control the drone all the way to the delivery point because it may not be able to go from the company’s office to its destination on its own without pilot. It also needs someone to open the improvised case that will encase the ordered product.

As seen in the Yudala video, a lady from the retail company walked up to the drone to remove the ordered phone from it before handing it over to the buyer.

Basically, if we are to take Yudala drones for what it is presently, it means at least a staff will jump on an Okada (motorcycle), pay the ‘bike man’ and dash to the customer’s place to prepare the ground for the drone’s arrival. He or she could as well just bring the product for the customer instead of waiting for the drone to arrive.

I also observed that Yudala’s drones cannot deliver to the doorstep of the customers because it is not GPS enabled. A delivery drone has to be automatically controlled from point of take off to delivery point and back without interference, if you looked closely at the video released for the delivery, you would see that customer was asked to come to the roadside to get what she ordered. However the process is suppose to be seamless with a notification sent to the customer when the drone is approaching.

Another issue of concern is the fact that Yudala’s drones cannot go far. We found out the delivery point and Yudala’s office are very close, which means that if the company wishes to aggressively pursue the feat of delivering with drones since many of such were acquired, then it could serve those that are around the company’s offices only.

The Consensus

As often said in school debates, I hope that with these few points of mine, I’ve been able to convince you that Yudala’s drones are a mere marketing and PR stunt and nothing more. But if the company insists that it has drones that can efficiently do as or much more than Amazon’s Prime Air, then we are going to have another shameful moment on our hands and the closest I can think is the shameful responses to the fake story of a Nigerian scholar that said he had solved the 156-year old Riemann Hypothesis.

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.

While Yudala’s strong will to drive technological advancement in the ecommerce space in Nigeria is commendable, their attempt to get PR attention should not involve marketing stunts that may make the rest of the world describe our tech industry as one built on lies.