The drone hums over a paddy field in Motakondur village in Telangana’s Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district, drawing the attention of scores of villagers. At the controls is 33-year-old farmer Usirika Sandhya, who covers the crop with pesticide in a matter of minutes, a task that would otherwise require hours of back-breaking work with a hand sprayer.

For Sandhya, however, the drone is about more than making farm work quicker. It is an attempt to spare her husband, Mahesh, the health problems he faces after long hours of pesticide spraying, while also opening up a new livelihood opportunity for her.

Her experience reflects a larger shift taking place in rural Telangana, where women from self-help groups (SHGs) are beginning to take up technology-driven agricultural services as drone pilots and rural entrepreneurs.

“Every crop season, my husband spends hours spraying pesticides with a hand sprayer, and the work takes a toll on his health. So, I wanted to find a solution and invested in a drone, seeing its growing use in villages,” she says.

Sandhya, who has studied till Class 10, and Mahesh, who has completed an Industrial Training Institute course, cultivate cotton and paddy on about 15 acres in the village, of which only two acres belong to them.

“I came to know that SERP is encouraging women to become drone pilots, and sought the help of the Zilla Samakhya (district federation) and the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) officials for financial assistance and training. I underwent 10 days of training,” she says.

Usirikaya Sandhya (33), a member of the Balaji Self-Help Group, flies an agriculture drone over her fields at Motakondur village of Yadadri Bhuvanangiri district, Telangana.

Nagara Gopal

A drone unit, comprising a battery-operated vehicle to safely carry the drone, was handed over to Sandhya during Independence Day celebrations at Bhuvanagiri, the district headquarters, on August 15 this year. The unit cost ₹7.90 lakh.

She is among 35 women from SHGs across 13 mandals who have been trained by the DRDA to take up modern, technology-based livelihood opportunities. For this, DRDA has partnered with pharmaceutical major Hetero and MIRAI, a company supplying agricultural products and connecting local farmers with global trade channels.

Around 50 people have also been trained in neighbouring Nalgonda district, as per MIRAI.

Yadadri District Collector Anuraag Jayanti says the initiative is aimed at “helping the trained women create self-employment opportunities” while providing farmers access to modern, technology-driven agricultural services.

For Sandhya, the drone is also an investment she hopes will eventually pay for itself. She is awaiting her Remote Pilot Certificate from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and is looking to offer drone-based agricultural services to other farmers.

She has already begun building a professional identity for the venture, preparing branding and marketing material and receiving initial enquiries from potential customers while completing her training and certification.

“I am optimistic that within a few years, I can clear the bank loan for the drone,” she says.

But Sandhya is not the only woman looking at agriculture differently. P. Jhansi, 29, from Aregudem village in Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district, is among those trained under the programme and is awaiting clearance for her application under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), a credit-linked subsidy scheme of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

“I had never imagined flying a drone for agricultural operations since we were involved in age-old traditional methods of farming. But thanks to the government’s initiatives, we are now using the latest technologies,” she says.

Financial assistance and training

The financial viability of the model remains crucial as more women are trained. District Rural Development Officer T. Nagi Reddy says efforts are being made to help the trainees access PMEGP. “Eligible applicants can get government subsidy of up to 35% of the unit cost,” he adds.

For the women, learning to fly a drone is only the first step. MIRAI director N.Vijaya Suseel says the programme also focuses on helping them build a business around the technology: “The trainees are supported in mobilising farmers, conducting field demonstrations, acquiring customers, scheduling drone operations, managing the business and providing service support.”

The agriculture department has been actively encouraging the farmers to use various apps.

Nagara Gopal

The shift is taking SHGs beyond their traditional roles in thrift, microcredit and small enterprises, with women increasingly entering technology-intensive and emerging sectors.

SERP Chief Executive Officer Divya Devarajan says the organisation plans to train more women as drone pilots, particularly those from agricultural families.

“SHG members have already demonstrated their ability to run small and medium businesses, and have recently entered the solar sector under the Indira Mahila Shakti scheme,” she adds.

The push has also received national attention. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised 53 SHG members from Sangareddy district who learnt drone operation through the DRDA in May last year. They are, however, reportedly yet to receive drones because of policy-related issues.

The State’s efforts to bring technology into agriculture extend beyond drones. Farmers are increasingly using artificial intelligence, mobile applications and other digital tools to make decisions on weather, crop management, irrigation and markets.

Namireddy Srinivas Reddy, a farmer from Molkapatnam village in Nalgonda district and a practising advocate, uses large language model tools such as ChatGPT for information on pest and fertiliser management.

He also uses artificial intelligence-based apps to check weather forecasts before spraying pesticides in his sweet lime orchard and to track daily lime prices. Some farmers are also experimenting with remotely operated smart drip-irrigation systems, he says.

Tech in the fields

For 26-year-old Byram Madhu of Munjampalli village in Endapalli mandal of Jagtial district, digital technology is helping promote more efficient farming practices. He works for a Hyderabad-based climate-tech company developing carbon-credit and regenerative-agriculture projects and encourages farmers to reduce water use in paddy through the company’s mobile app, which uses digital field data and satellite-based monitoring.

Tipparti Ajay, also from Munjampalli, owns a harvester and tractor and undertakes tilling work for farmers. He says weather apps and digital tools for measuring land are increasingly proving useful in his work.

These individual uses of technology are part of Telangana’s broader effort to build a digital agriculture ecosystem. The State’s Information and Communications Technology (IT&C) Policy, launched in 2016, identified technologies such as drones, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, machine learning and cloud computing as areas for development.

An Emerging Technologies Wing was established within the IT&C Department in 2018, followed by a specialised Digital Agriculture Wing as the nodal agency for technology adoption in agriculture.

The State has been working with the Agriculture Department to promote data-driven policymaking and technology-based solutions, including the use of drones, AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) for crop-health monitoring, pest prediction, soil-nutrient testing, quality assessment and market linkages.

Partnerships with research and technology organisations are also being used to provide farmers with evidence-based advisories and improve crop planning.

“At our Centre for Digital Agriculture and Technology at Rajendranagar, the Professor Jayashankar Telangana Agricultural University is using AI, IoT, remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), drones and robotics for climate-smart and precision agriculture,” says university Vice-Chancellor Aldas Janaiah.

The centre houses specialised units such as the Agro Climate Research Unit, the All India Coordinated Research Project on Farm Implements and Machinery Unit, the Remote Sensing and GIS Lab, the PJTAU Drone Academy and the SBI ARISA Lab. Their work spans farm mechanisation, digital advisories, weather-based agrometeorological services, crop monitoring, drone pilot training and smart farming technologies.

PJTAU has also contributed to the development of crop-specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for spraying pesticides on crops using drones. It has developed a drone-based package of practices for wet direct-seeded rice covering the application of herbicides, nutrients and pesticides. The university has also strengthened its drone-training capabilities. Four faculty members completed DGCA-certified Master Trainers Training in 2024.

The DGCA has approved the PJTAU Drone Academy to offer dual certification for small- and medium-category drone pilot training, making it the first institution among Remote Pilot Training Organisations (RPTOs) and State Agricultural Universities in the Telugu States to receive such recognition. The academy has trained as many as 780 remote pilots.

The technology push is also creating space for agri-tech entrepreneurship. Agri & Food Innovation Hub (AgHub), a hub-and-spoke incubator with its Innovation Hub at the PJTAU campus in Hyderabad, supports agri-tech and food-tech start-ups and student entrepreneurs from across the country.

Meanwhile, the Association for Innovation Development of Entrepreneurship in Agriculture (a-IDEA), the technology business incubator of the ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (ICAR-NAARM), Hyderabad, has supported more than 350 agri-start-ups through incubation, acceleration and mentoring programmes.

More than 92 startups have been accelerated through its AGRI UDAAN Food and Agribusiness Accelerator Programme. It has facilitated nearly ₹25 crore in grants and seed funding, while startups supported by it have collectively raised about ₹160 crore from private investors.

The startups work across different areas including AgTech, FoodTech, biotechnology, AI, robotics, farm mechanisation, supply chains and sustainability. “The success of our startups and the impact created at the grassroots level, benefiting more than 1.5 lakh farmers, reflect the transformative potential of technology and entrepreneurship in agriculture,” says Raman Meenakshi Sundaram, director of ICAR-NAARM and president of a-IDEA.

Limits to going digital

The spread of digital agriculture is, however, not without hurdles. While AI and other technologies can improve productivity, resource efficiency and farm-level decision-making, their adoption is constrained by the structure of Indian agriculture itself. More than 85% of operational holdings are in the small and marginal category, according to the latest Agriculture Census, limiting the economies of scale needed to deploy some advanced technologies.

Low farm incomes and indebtedness can further restrict farmers’ ability to invest in digital tools, while gaps in digital literacy and internet use remain in rural areas, as indicated in studies conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), National Statistical Office and other institutions.

Last-mile connectivity and other infrastructure gaps also continue to pose challenges in several villages.

For Telangana’s farmers and rural entrepreneurs, therefore, the question is no longer whether technology can enter the field. It is whether the ecosystem around it — training, finance, connectivity, services and market access — can keep pace with the technology itself.