Good Point.
Do we know who the import the components from precisely. Any info on that
Also, if it’s just assembly then margins will be lower on that. Presently margins are all over the place but let’s keep at Fy 2023 OPM margins of 32%. I think current call they said they can maintain 35% next year.
So my query is if out of 650 crores of drones orders they dispatch 350 cr in FY 25 how will they maintain margins promised.
This sounds concerning if indeed there is no proprietary knowledge in the anti-drone solutions that Zen is providing. Hopefully someone can ask this question to the management in the next conference call because the management is expecting a lot from their anti-drone segment.
Not just Indian market. Their export order book is 35%… i really don’t know the products nor am I expert, but if they are winning orders outside India means something special…
I believe they get 45% margins from simulators and 20-25% from antidrones. Blended they have guided for 35%
Thanks for sharing insights on the company. It’s quite concerning that the anti-drone segment is an assemble-in-India play and not IP driven product. I went through con-calls and found out this comment from Ashok Atluri.
“So, we think that we are in a very good space, but we expect competition to come, but how will they really get it even if we developed because it has taken us hell lot of time to develop this product hell lot of expertise.”
I hope you can share more details. If Zen’s anti drone products are just assembled products without any significant IP why did Zen take a lot of time to develop the products?
Zen Technologies is not importing any component like other companies and in-fact Zen Technologies is the sole applier in many anti-drone tenders since other companies do not fulfill the criteria of indigenization.
In Feb 22 the Govt has banned all the import of drones and components to encourage domestic drone manufacturing industry to become global drone hub by 2030.
company is fully utilizing its manufacturing capacities for anti-drone systems.
Moreover an assembler can not generate 25% EBITDA.
Please check the import data for zen. Also , please read the concall transcript for zen where the ceo says that if Taiwan get blockaded by China , we cannot deliver any anti drone products. Indian govt allows you to import and assemble. Zen does not make drones! It’s making anti drones which is RF based tech to block the spectrum.
Zen anti-done system. There are more beyond RF jamming.
Regards,
Raj
Disc: Invested
That’s chips… everyone imports some parts… we are not yet 100% local made
While I have no capability to validate technically, Zen do have patents in counter drone strikes. I will have to assume that simple buy+assemble company won’t be able to get a patent.
It is obvious that mostly the chip components/hardwares are imported either by Zen or any other company India. It would be naive of us to believe if any company says otherwise.
There is nothing wrong in assembling the components that are manufactured elsewhere, what we have to understand whether the company holds IP to design of these components/behaviours. Infact that’s what most product companies do and it’s a wise strategy.
I would be damned if the firmware is also imported as one of the fellow member posted. I never heard the Mr. Atluri accepting this claim.
If you dig deep and chekc the patents being claimed, most of the patents are in mechanical assemblies. 21 which are granted in mechanical. I have not seen a single Patent in granted state in anti drones / firmware aspects. Does anyone have the list? It should be public info but other than the mechanical ones, nothing is patented.
We can search for Patents on WIPO, a search for Zen technologies return 1502 results. It is not humanly possible to even go through even the title let alone the full patents.
Lot of the patents are there for Simulation business. In between I have found possible one for Anti-drone system.
My understanding is this patent is for “Video based drone identification and tracking”.
The components mentioned in this patent are -
From this my understanding is Zen is a military grade software company which imports the hardware and put them together to work with in-house Software.
I need fellow members help, to go thru 1500 patents to find the once related to anti-drone and analyse them to reject or accept my understanding.
Thanks.
Is it possible to get the raw data about these 1500 patents? I use the premium version of ChatGPT. I can use it to sift through this data.
Hi Aadhar,
Thanks for the quick reply. The screenshot of the 1500 patents mentions the link on how to reproduce the data.
Kindly use the link to reproduce the data and check if it whole list is downloadable.
But I wish to mention the patent for anti-drone system I have exampled does not use the word ‘drone’ or ‘anti-drone’ anywhere.
Thanks.
Great Work. Need to put it through an AI tool. Lets see what it unearths.
Great job! Need to use quotation for search term, only 89 patents with phrase “zen technologies”.
Disc: invested
Also - Please note that filing for a patent is different from “granted”. You can file for 100s of patents. It would be great if we can filter out the granted
So this is an example of non simulator patent application. IN201841034740 RETROFIT TRACKING SYSTEM (wipo.int)
A manual glance through shows me that 90% + is simulator patent applications.
Now most patent applications are obviously for individual segments of an simulator h/w + s/w. So when we say Zen has I.P while technically true needs to be checked for how important that particular IP is.
