Measure may not be building the ultimate flying camera, or drones that drop burritos at your door. But the Washington D.C.-based startup has raised $15 million in Series B funding to fly drones as a service for other businesses that want to do things like conduct inspections, capture videos, or gather other insights from on high.
Measure CEO and cofounder Brandon Torres Declet said, “Over the past 2 years there has been something like $750 million invested into this space. The vast majority went to hardware and software. But flying a drone isn’t intuitive. And getting quality data is difficult. So we focus on giving you ROI, not just selling you hardware or a software license.”
The IT services firm Cognizant led the investment in Measure, joined by Hudson Bay Capital, as well as one unnamed sovereign wealth fund. According to Torres Declet, the company will use the capital for hiring, to expand into new markets geographically, and to develop new capabilities taking advantage of cutting edge new drones, sensors, cameras and software hitting the market.
By now, the “drone as a service” startup has amassed a diverse fleet and employs 20 full-time pilots, alongside flight operations, data engineering and drone engineering specialists. The drones it uses included both fixed-wing and multirotor models made by Aerialtronics, Aibotix, DJI and Sensefly. It also uses software like Skyward and DroneDeploy for flight management and data processing, among others. The company is always evaluating new hardware and apps in the space, of course.