Caliper Drone Services has further monetized its overhead shots by turning them into picturesque holiday postcards, promoting less popular but beautiful places around Guyana. Already the cards are a hit among the company’s corporate clientele as well as Guyanese who wish to send greetings to their relatives in the diaspora.
Owner of the company Julian Cadogan has gone from taking drone shots of construction sites to just enjoying taking them as a hobby. Over time, he compiled photos of some never-before-seen scenic places in Guyana and then had the idea to print them as postcards.
In October, Cadogan and his team decided to check out the market for such postcards. They finally had a finished product by the end of November, which they used for the purpose of a survey. The feedback, he said, was good.
The front of each card is a photo of a place in Guyana and the back gives a small description of the photo and the location.
The postcards, he noted, can be this season’s gift of joy and cheer as loved ones reflect on the beauty of Guyana. They can also be used for Christmas parties thank you tokens.
Currently Caliper Drone Services is working on streamlining a mechanism to have the cards shipped to customers in Canada and the US.
Just three years ago, Cadogan was caught up on his farm at Hubu Backdam, East Bank Essequibo and did not have an inkling about such a business. But then he attended the Digital Wealth Creation Summit in 2017. He was among a number of farmers at the conference who were made aware of how drones could be of service. They learned that instead of farmers venturing into the backdam often to inspect their crops, they could simply have drones do it for them.
Cadogan did not just take the presenter’s word for it. Instead he returned home and researched the initiative. In doing so, he realized how effective using this technology could be for farming. But the more he looked into the advantages of having a drone, the less he thought of using it for farming. He went back online to learn how to operate the device.
He began thinking of how beneficial it would be for construction services to have drone shots of their sites and shared this idea with three friends. Once they had talked it over, they had a friend invest in the business to provide them with the capital they needed to get the initiative underway.
Caliper Drone Services was founded in 2017 and Cadogan found he needed to focus all of his attention on it, so he stopped farming for a while. He is considering returning to it in about five years once all of his projects are proceeding as planned.
It took some time for the business to get underway as Cadogan and his team tried to understand how best they could market their services.
“Let’s say for a construction agency, it might be easy for someone working right there to take the photos but depending on your time and your work schedule, they might get bogged down and forget to do it,” Cadogan explained. “So, by having an outside source, you know that every week on Saturdays, photos need to be taken and you can guarantee that we’ll take it within that time frame and submit it to you.
“We create photos of construction company sites to send back to their stakeholders. Let’s say Lands and Surveys or any other government agency is interested in having a drone team within their infrastructure, we can suggest the best drones for them, provide the training and ensure that they have the requisite tools to set it up and get running. We also procure drones for persons who are interested. They just let us know and we would suggest the best ones for them and have it imported.”
Asked whether he was worried about competition by importing drones for others, Cadogan said he was not concerned about this at all. He noted that persons would still purchase drones for themselves with or without his company’s help and added that often the equipment is for personal use.
He said Caliper Drone Services is one of two known companies that provide such services in the country. His company is sourced mainly for the purpose of accessing sites and recording the progress of various projects. Giving an example, he said a contractor might tell his boss that work on a drain was completed and as proof, pictures of the necessary site could be taken using drones. The use of drones could also avert someone from entering an already congested site and prevent disruption of ongoing works.
He gave another example, “Let’s say you want to see a riverside property and the road stops a mile away from the actual area. We can take a drone and we can fly up and down to view the boundaries. We can see exactly what is there and understand that no one is trespassing there. You can even access what the river conditions there are like.”
The self-taught drone pilot shared that it takes about a month or two for someone to move from being a novice to a competent pilot.
Now that Caliper Drone Services is working with some major construction companies, it has firsthand information on some of the projects being done in Guyana. The company has made a name for itself and its services are often in demand. Cadogan shared that sometimes they are contracted for more than one job at a time which is no issue, since he has several drone pilots.
Asked how the service was impacted by the pandemic, he said it was more positive than negative, explaining that since many clients were stuck abroad, unable to return to Guyana, they relied on his services.
Caliper Drone Services can be contacted at 627-1583 or 699-2508.