This incubator wants to connect European drone startups with China’s hardware hub

Photo credit Ed Schipul.

The commercial drone industry could be worth billions of dollars in five years, and a new incubator wants to help software startups in Europe enter the market without worrying about hardware.

On Tuesday, Hong Kong-based IoT accelerator Brinc and Barcelonian big data startup incubator Incubio announced Reimagine Drone, a joint drone service incubator targeting European drone startups. The idea is to connect China’s manufacturing hub in the Pearl River Delta region – which includes China’s “Silicon Valley of Hardware” or Shenzhen – to drone service startups in Europe.

“We can now give European entrepreneurs looking to jumpstart their hardware startup but without knowledge of Asia the depth of expertise that comes from an accelerator with locations in Hong Kong and China,” said Simon Lee, co-founder and managing director of Incubio, in a press release.

Reimagine Drone says it wants to create a “new generation” of drone services in verticals like virtual reality, augmented reality, data analytics, 360 drone user experiences, computer vision, and surveying and mapping. The incubator’s goal is to lower the hardware and technical barrier for software-focused startups in Europe.

Reimagine Drone headquarters in Barcelona. Photo credit: Reimagine Drone.

Brinc will provide an open platform for Reimagine Drone startups that can be used for software development and tweaked to fit hardware modifications. The Hong Kong-based accelerator will also offer Reimagine Drone startups exposure to hardware investors in Asia through industry events in the region, such as Global Sources and Brinc’s own Internet Of Life Summit.

“We see drones as a maturing medium with improving battery life, increasing flight distance, stronger stability, and control and smart and open systems,” said Manav Gupta, CEO and founder of Brinc, in a press release. “It all helps to further re-emphasize our belief that when a physical object is connected, it can become a service.”

Reimagine Drone will be one of the first drone service incubators in Barcelona. Other drone incubators in Europe include DronePort, which is based in Belgium and also focuses on drone service startups.

The incubator will start accepting applications to its two-month pre-accelerator program today. Out of the fifteen selected for the pre-accelerator program, three finalists will be chosen to enter Reimagine Drone’s incubator program, where they will prototype software on top of existing hardware and create firmware-based solutions.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/drone-service-incubator-reimagine-drones
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