“Zipline began in 2014 when two of its founders, Keller Rinaudo and Mr. Hetzler, visited a young public health worker in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The worker had created a text-messaging system that enabled hospital workers to urgently request medical supplies in life-or-death situations.” But these messages turned out simply to be a long list of death sentences. “Today in many places worldwide, attempts are made to deliver medical supplies by motorcycle or pickup truck over roads that are frequently impassable.” Zipline’s drone system “will initially be capable of making 50 to 150 daily deliveries of blood and emergency medicine to Rwanda’s 21 transfusing facilities.” There is obviously a very practical potential for growth in both number as well as location of deliveries with this system.
The Zipline fleet consists of “15 small aircraft, each with twin electric motors, a 3.5-pound payload, and an eight-foot wingspan. They use GPS receivers to navigate and communicate via the Rwandan cellular network. They will be able to fly in rough weather conditions, enduring winds up to 30 miles per hour.” When they reach the hospitals, they will drop small packages with simple paper parachutes from very low altitudes. “The planes will then return to a home base, where they will be prepared for a new mission by swapping in a new battery and snapping in a new flight plan stored in a SIM card. The system makes it possible to maintain a temperature-controlled supply chain needed to provide blood and vaccines— which is often impossible to establish in developing countries.
“The start-up has raised $18 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), SV Angel, Subtraction Capital, Stanford University and individuals including Jerry Yang, a founder of Yahoo, and Paul Allen, a founder of Microsoft.”