• SUASNews
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AirModo Drone Insurance App Partners with Unmanned Safety Institute for Safety Benefits

AirModo is a new instant drone insurance app that allows unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operators to purchase either hourly or annual policies to suit their growing business or hobby.  The app, available on both iOS and Android platforms, provides options to buy insurance for a single drone or a fleet, add multiple pilots, and purchase on-the-spot insurance with policy documents generated and sent via email once operators have made their payment.

Now, in addition to a fast and convenient app experience, AirModo has partnered with the drone industry’s most recognized provider of professional training and safety services, the Unmanned Safety Institute (USI).  All policies purchased on AirModo’s app accumulate SafetyPoints, which can be used with USI.

“The fun and excitement associated with recreational drone use, or the enormous value proposition derived from commercial UAS operations, can disappear in an instant in the event of an incident or accident,” commented Josh Olds, President and CEO of the Unmanned Safety Institute. Olds continued, “Even with today’s UAS becoming more capable and sophisticated, risk management remains the responsibility of every operator.  We worked with AirModo to provide an incredibly wide selection of safety related products and services that can elevate individual pilots’ knowledge and skills and enhance organizational commitment to safe, effective, and efficient operations.”

AirModo’s Andrew Spiegel added, “AirModo recognized the ‘anywhere, anytime’ need inherent in drone operations throughout the recreational and commercial marketplaces.  With the AirModo app, our customers can select custom coverage, instantly access their insurance certificate, and initiate in-house claims service.  Because AirModo believes that the best risk mitigation strategy is a well-trained pilot using industry best practices for safe operations, we are happy to announce that every AirModo policy issued earns SafetyPoints that can be redeemed for a wide variety of safety-related products and services from USI.”

The AirModo app is available for download in the App Store for iOS devices or the Google Play Store for Android devices.  To see more about the wide variety of safety-related products and services available from USI, please visit: https://www.unmannedsafetyinstitute.org/airmodo and to learn more about AirModo and to see how it compares, please visit https://www.airmodo.com/

• SUASNews
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Deepak Ahuja will Join Zipline as its Chief Business and Financial Officer

Zipline, the global leader in instant delivery, today announced that a world-class leader will join the company’s leadership team to usher in its next stage of growth.

Zipline designs, manufactures and operates the world’s largest instant logistics and delivery system for businesses, governments and consumers. Zipline is transforming the way goods move, from powering Rwanda’s national blood delivery network and Ghana’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution to providing on-demand home delivery for e-commerce, to enabling healthcare providers to bring care directly to U.S. homes. The technology is complex but the idea is simple: a teleportation service that delivers what you need, when you need it. Through its technology, the company is decarbonizing delivery, decreasing road congestion and reducing fossil fuel consumption and air pollution, while providing equitable access for billions of people and building a more resilient global supply chain.

Deepak Ahuja will join Zipline as its first ever Chief Business and Financial Officer on September 30. Ahuja brings more than 20 years of financial leadership experience to Zipline’s management team. In his new role, he will oversee all aspects of Zipline’s global financial operations, including finance, accounting, investor relations, as well as global sales, excluding the Africa region. Most recently, Ahuja was the CFO at Verily Life Sciences. Prior to that, he was the CFO of Tesla where, among many things, he oversaw the company’s rise to profitability.

“Rarely do I see this level of disruption and impact paired with the world-class technology that Zipline’s team is building,” Ahuja said. “The company’s instant logistics solution was born out of a deep understanding of what their customers need, and has already delivered incredible value to people around the world by saving lives, time, money and reducing the environmental impact of deliveries on the planet. It’s an exciting time for Zipline, and I’m thrilled to join the team as we keep building to offer these solutions at a massive scale.”

Ahuja will join Zipline at a pivotal time in its growth. Zipline was operating in three countries at the start of 2021. The company has since expanded to four new countries, began delivering new categories of products in the human and animal health, e-commerce and food sectors, and doubled the size of the population that it can serve. In addition to entering new markets, Zipline has grown its business in the countries where it already operated to include new delivery categories and new locations. Globally, Zipline operates in three continents and completes a delivery every two minutes. It also recently received FAA Part 135 approval for its long-range drone delivery service in the U.S.

“Deepak brings decades of experience helping to build revolutionary and disruptive companies in the transportation and health sectors,” said Keller Rinaudo, CEO and co-founder of Zipline. “He embodies our values as a leader and shares our vision and passion for building the world’s first instant delivery system that serves all people equally. We are scaling quickly and did as many deliveries last month as we did in the entirety of 2019. Deepak’s track record will have a massive impact as we continue to expand our footprint, support new categories, and build a business for the long-term.”

In addition to Ahuja, Zipline recently added its first ever Chief Marketing Officer, Ashley Chandler, to its growing executive team. Chandler joined Zipline at the end of July and was previously the CMO of Color Health during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, she led marketing at Stripe and spent more than 10 years at Google where she oversaw brand marketing for Google Cloud.

To date, Zipline has delivered more than 380,000 packages with more than 3.5 million products, and flown more than 25 million autonomous miles. Each flight produces about 30 times less CO₂ emissions per mile than an average electric vehicle and up to 98% less CO₂ emissions than a combustion engine vehicle, according to company estimates. The company’s instant logistics system currently supports the medical, health and retail sectors, delivering blood, vaccines, COVID supplies, prescriptions, e-commerce items, products that support human and animal health, and food. To learn more about Zipline, visit flyzipline.com.

About Zipline
Zipline is the global instant logistics leader who transforms logistics systems so that they can serve all people equally. We design, manufacture and operate the world’s largest automated on-demand delivery system, which to date has made more than 380,000 commercial deliveries containing more than 3.5 million products, and reduced delivery emissions by up to 98% compared to traditional methods. Zipline is the trusted partner for governments, global companies and leading healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. For more information, visit flyzipline.com.

• SUASNews
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Zipline transforms blood delivery in Rwanda

• SUASNews
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Zipline delivers 1 million COVID-19 vaccines in Ghana

Zipline, the global leader in instant logistics, and the Ghana Ministry of Health today announced they have delivered one million COVID-19 vaccine doses via Zipline’s automated, on-demand delivery system. The partners also announced that Zipline has released select findings from a new third-party report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which shows the impact of Zipline’s instant logistics system on Ghana’s health system. The data demonstrates significant increases in the availability, reliability and range of inventory at health facilities by addressing supply chain challenges like lack of visibility, uncertain demand forecasting and shipment delays.

“Our government’s investment in healthcare delivery is part of our larger mission to build a stronger, more agile health system that better serves the people of Ghana,” said Ghana’s Minister of Health, Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu. “Over the past few years, we’ve made huge strides toward getting people the care they need, when and where they need it. And when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were prepared to rapidly and equitably deliver vaccines to Ghanaians everywhere.”

The Government of Ghana and Zipline first began working together back in 2019. Today, Zipline operates at national scale, serving over 15 million people from six distribution centers, with two more expected to launch later this year. The service has expanded rapidly in Ghana to meet demand, scaling from serving 160 facilities in 2019 to nearly 2,300 today. In that time, Zipline Ghana has flown 13 million miles and delivered more than five million doses of vaccines, in addition to blood products and other essential medicines.

“Our partnership with Zipline has played a vital role in Ghana’s robust administration of COVID-19 vaccines to combat the pandemic and foster healthier communities,” said the Director General of Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye. “Through Zipline’s automated, on-demand delivery service and other efforts by the government, we’ve been able to rapidly and equitably distribute vaccines to many parts of the country.” 

The independent study of Zipline’s impact was conducted by IDinsight and analyzed health facilities served by three of Zipline’s distribution centers in Ghana. The results indicate that Zipline meaningfully contributes to the Ghanaian government’s work to expand healthcare across the country, with a statistically significant impact on inventory availability and supply chain performance. Select findings show the Zipline system:

• Shortened vaccine stockouts by 60%, and decreased inventory-driven missed vaccination opportunities by 42%
• Decreased days facilities were without critical medical supplies by 21%
• Increased the types of medicines and supplies stocked at health facilities by 10%

To put this in context, each year an average of one in three countries experience at least one stockout of at least one vaccine for at least one month. Stock management at the country level accounts for approximately 18% of these stockouts. These inventory challenges can make it more difficult for patients to receive vaccinations, contributing to already-declining immunization coverage worldwide that leaves millions of people partially or completely unvaccinated. Enhanced inventory management and health supply chain can help address these gaps and build healthier communities. 

“We’re proud to play a key role in Ghana’s healthcare transformation,” said Daniel Marfo, Zipline’s Senior Vice President of Africa. “They’ve made critical investments in addressing the systemic challenges of the healthcare supply chain. These investments have had a profound impact on the availability of medicines and vaccines, enabling patients to reliably access the care they need.”

“Robust evidence gives companies like Zipline fuller visibility into how its service is used and whether desired outcomes are reached,” said Dr. Valentina Brailovskaya, the Principal Investigator on the evaluation. “We encourage Zipline and the Ghana Ministry of Health to keep the momentum of evidence generation and think critically about how to further improve medical supply chains and, ultimately, patient care.”

For more information on the new analysis and Zipline’s operations in Ghana, visit https://flyzipline.com/ghana-impact-evaluation. 

• DroneLife
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Zipline Delivers for Walmart: Drone Delivery Launches in Pea Ridge, Arkansas

Zipline delivers for Walmart: Instant Delivery Service Launches

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Today, Walmart and Zipline announced the launch of their new instant delivery service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where the service will make on-demand deliveries of select health and wellness and consumable items from the Walmart Neighborhood Market.

“Zipline’s autonomous aircraft present an incredible opportunity to offer customers an on-demand delivery option for the items they need now, such as a thermometer, non-prescription medication or an emergency pack of diapers,” said Tom Ward, senior vice president, Last Mile Delivery, Walmart U.S. “Even more, Zipline’s aircraft can help provide immediate access to needed items for both hard-to-reach and at-risk populations, such as rural communities and elderly customers. By bringing this game-changing technology to the rural community of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, we’re continuing to look for ways to make shopping with Walmart convenient and easy – for everyone.”

Zipline Delivers for Walmart

Following the service’s initial announcement last fall, Walmart and Zipline have been collaborating on the construction of a first-of-its kind 25-foot platform which serves as the infrastructure for take-off and landing. Located directly behind the Neighborhood Market, the platform houses several of Zipline’s autonomous aircraft as well as its flight operations crew. Zipline’s aircraft are capable of servicing a 50-mile radius at full capacity.

Starting today, eligible customers can begin placing orders by ordering through the Zipline app.

A Walmart associate will then hand the packaged product off to Zipline staff, who prepare the aircraft for launch. The aircraft then departs to the customer’s home, where it drops off the package and returns to the platform. The delivery status can be tracked through the Zipline app.

“We’ve seen firsthand the impact that instant logistics can have in making important, even life saving products, available on a moment’s notice,” said Zipline co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo. “At the same time, the past two years have proven the need to bring health products closer to home, where they are more accessible. Working with Walmart, we’re able to bring this type of service to Northwest Arkansas, showcasing what the future of health access looks like.”

“Only two weeks after Walmart launched its autonomous truck delivery system in Northwest Arkansas, the company is launching its autonomous aircraft service,” said Governor Asa Hutchinson. “Walmart and its partners such as Zipline are harnessing customer-friendly technology with such lightning speed that the future is becoming a reality far sooner than many Arkansans thought possible.”

Zipline first started operating in 2016. Since then, the company has carried out more than 200,000 commercial deliveries of over 4.5 million units of medical supplies, serving more than 20 million people across multiple countries.

Read more about Zipline medical drone delivery, funding, COVID-19 response, and partnership with Walmart.

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.

Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry.  Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.

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