HYDERABAD: Bomb-dropping kamikaze drones – 300kmph, radar-proof. Assembled inside a hostel room of BITS Pilani’s Hyderabad campus. The Army buys in.Two 20-year-old engineering students of the institute have stunned India’s defence circles by building and selling cutting-edge UAVs to Army units across Jammu, Haryana’s Chandimandir, Bengal’s Panagarh, and Arunachal Pradesh – all within two months of launching their start-up Apollyon Dynamics. Their mission: reduce India’s dependency on imported drones.Jayant Khatri, a mechanical engineering student from Rajasthan’s Ajmer, and electrical engineering student Sourya Choudhury from Kolkata built their drones with off-the-shelf parts, customised the systems for Indian terrain, and pitched them to Army officers via cold messages on LinkedIn.“I just started shooting cold emails to whoever I could find… Luckily, a colonel responded and called us to Chandigarh for a demo,” Khatri said Monday.What followed was a whirlwind – a live demo of bomb-dropping and racing drones, followed by more demonstrations to military regiments. Orders began flowing in. The company was born.Their standout product: a kamikaze drone that hits speeds over 300kmph, five times faster than standard commercial UAVs, and delivers 1kg payloads with pinpoint accuracy. “Our drones are not just fast – they can’t be detected on radar,” said Choudhury.The duo insists every UAV is built in-house with a focus on “ruggedness, reliability and adaptability”. “Our shared love of robotics brought us together. We started with a defence-tech club on campus. Then came the orders – that’s when we knew we had to go big,” Choudhury said.The team now includes six second-year students and is working on next-generation VTOL & fixed-wing platforms to boost mission flexibility. They also offer hands-on training to military personnel – even those with no prior flight experience.“It’s heartening to see what they’ve achieved,” said professor Sanket Goel of BITS Pilani. In “3 Idiots”, Joy Lobo’s passion for machines died in silence – no support, no takers. In real life, two students built war-ready drones in a hostel room. The Army called back.
