When Hurricane Helen hit Asheville, North Carolina, in September, the city's police department turned to public safety drone startup Paladin for help. The startup's 30-member team worked nights and weekends to help the Asheville Police Department locate people and deliver supplies.
Asheville is a Paladin customer, and its team was able to help because the company's software can control the drone remotely from the company's Houston headquarters, Paladin founder and CEO Divy Shrivastava told TechCrunch. . Despite the closure of Asheville's roads and the lack of cell phone or internet service on the ground, Paladin's technology was able to make a big difference.
“I think it painted a clear picture for me of what the future of the drone industry will look like,” Shrivastava said. “We were grateful that Asheville believed in us and supported us.”
Paladin was launched as a first responder technology aimed at reducing the time between a 911 call and rescue, while also being able to assist in the event of a natural disaster, Shrivastava said.
Paladin's software works with any drone and is designed to be easy to use, Shrivastava said. When a 911 dispatcher receives a call, a Paladin-equipped drone is dispatched to the scene of the call within 90 seconds. Public safety departments can view the situation from their offices and determine what types of resources they need to send, if necessary.
The motivation behind Paladin is personal. When Shrivastava was 17 years old and living in Ohio, a friend's house caught fire. 911 was called immediately, but it took some time for first responders to arrive. Although the house ended up burning down, the experience stayed with Shrivastava.
“I was really obsessed with this issue of not having modern infrastructure for public safety,” Shrivastava said. “It seemed obvious at the time, but the problem was slow response times and a lack of situational awareness. Drones are equipped with cameras that can fill in the information gaps. You'll see a live feed that shows you exactly what it's like.”
Shrivastava started working on the idea while in college, then dropped out to join the Thiel Fellowship, an incubator program led by Peter Thiel. He officially launched the company in 2018 and began sales in 2021. Since then, the company has signed contracts with dozens of public safety departments and says its revenue has nearly doubled from the previous quarter.
Paladin recently raised a $5.2 million seed round led by Gradient, Google's early-stage AI fund, with participation from Khosla Ventures, 1517, Toyota Ventures, and others. Shrivastava said the proceeds will be used to continue building out Paladin's software capabilities and dedicating resources to further getting the company's name out there.
In addition to the funding, the company is investing in a number of new features in its drone software, including the ability for drones to drop supplies such as Narcan and life jackets during 911 calls, and the ability for drones to spot and avoid other objects. also announced. aircraft.
Shrivastava said the company has been able to not only reduce the time between 911 calls and responses, but also eliminate 10 to 25 percent of 911 calls that are wrong calls or wrong calls that don't require a response at all. Ta. He added that many police departments are short on officers and staff, so cutting unnecessary calls makes a big difference.
“In most departments, the number of sworn officers is less than 50,” Shrivastava said. “One technology that improves efficiency by 25% is important. What we sometimes forget is that the majority of this country is very small towns with limited resources. This is a problem.”
Shrivastava knows what some people think when they hear that Paladin is supporting the deployment of drones to police stations – that they will be used for surveillance and patrolling in general. . He said Paladin is really intentional about the use case for its software, and is designed to only launch in response to a 911 call.
He added that the drones also comply with drone regulations in all 50 states and that the drones do not begin recording video until they arrive at their destination.
Using technology to improve public safety is an area of increasing interest among entrepreneurs these days. In this space, another startup building with a similar mission is being prepared. Prepared is building a system to help 911 dispatchers by using video to give them a more complete picture of what's happening at the scene of a call. Prepared has raised over $70 million in venture capital.
Shrivastava said there is demand from the public safety sector, and the startup is currently receiving requests for the technology multiple times a week.
“It's still in its infancy in terms of the market as a whole,” Shrivastava said. “We are currently present in dozens of cities and are expanding fairly quickly, but that's less than 0.1% of the market.”