An In-Depth Interview With Kespry CEO, Paul Doersch

[Drone News]

I’m continuously impressed

In one sentence, what is Kespry?

Kespry is the leader in commercial drone and data intelligence, enabling companies to better collect, analyze and share information to improve their business operations.

What are the advantages / disadvantages of using a full-stack system?

Kespry designs all the critical components from Kespry Drone to Kespry Cloud, this includes the airframe, electronics and flight control system, as well as the Kespry Cloud data processing, visualization and reporting software.

By creating the full ecosystem, we’re able to solve specific problems for our customers very well. No part of the Kespry product is a black box to us, this allows us to react quickly to our customers’ needs, and help them expand the use of drones at their companies.

The UAS industry has many young companies that have found varying degrees of success. Throughout the course of a few short years, Kespry has gone from a fledgling company with seed money to an industry staple with millions of dollars in subsequent funding. What is it that separates you from others who are struggling in the market?

During these early days of the commercial aerial intelligence industry, it’s important to learn from industries and customers about what applications are valuable to them, while still having a broader vision for the role of drones.

Kespry is well positioned to do this because of our engineering team and our business model. We are unique in that we control all critical components of our product, and while that is challenging and requires having a world-class team, it’s necessary to help bring a powerful new technology into the world.

The UAS industry seems to be spreading into a new sector everyday and Kespry seems no different with applications ranging from aggregates to insurance to construction. Do you feel like your product is best suited to large scale projects in these sectors (and others) or do they scale to small business operations as well?

Kespry is currently focused on the industries and applications where we can provide the most value, the fastest, as we scale globally. We’re seeing significant interest in areas like aggregates, forestry, insurance, inspection, mining and road building. There are strong use cases in those industries to use drones to save time and money. Because of that, companies are deploying drones across dozens of sites and mapping thousands of acres.

Other markets that will be interesting in the future are probably agriculture, oil & gas and security. In the long run, these kinds of aerial intelligence technologies have applications throughout virtually all industries and will affect entire economies. That’s why it’s such an exciting time to be involved in this market!

Given the types of operations your customers are involved in, what kind of case studies or stories are you most proud of?

In the aggregates space, our customers tell us that they’re now able to manage inventory with a few clicks on an iPad, where they used to climb massive piles of rocks and put their safety at risk.

Aside from the obvious economic benefits, it’s great to know that our product literally changes people’s lives.

Looking to the future, Kespry has created a prototype drone in collaboration with NVIDIA, which automatically locates and classifies vehicles on industrial sites. The drone prototype knows the difference between a pickup truck and a bulldozer as it flies over them. Combining deep learning technology with aerial data foreshadows a bright future in which construction logistics will be drastically improved, saving billions of dollars, and disaster inspections can be performed immediately in order to get displaced families back on their feet much quicker.

While our readers (and your customers) are worldwide, any thoughts on how FAA Part 107 will impact the industry?

FAA Part 107 marks the beginning of an inflection point for commercial drones. The FAA is officially sanctioning the commercial use of drones across the country with sensible rules and less certification. We look forward to further improvements in the regulatory environment in the near future.

Where do you see Kespry in a few years? What are you working toward?

Kespry is growing quickly, having doubled our team in the past few months, and scaling production with our customers across the globe. Ultimately, we are indexing the physical planet to make use of the data. This requires both the Kespry Drone to autonomously collect all this valuable data and the Kespry Cloud to visualize and process it. The Kespry Drone is essentially an intelligent node on the internet that happens to move in space and time. The more we remove manual human effort from its operation, the more frequently we can capture information of larger areas with higher resolution. As we work with our customers and partners to create data processing software for the Kespry Cloud aerial intelligence platform, we are able to solve bigger and bigger business problems.

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