How Paladin’s drones helped Asheville during Hurricane Helene

When Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina in September, the city’s police department reached out to the public safety drone in Paladin for help. A 30-member team of startups jumped in to work nights and weekends to help the Asheville Police Department with recruitment and referrals.

Asheville was a Paladin customer and its team was able to help because its software could control the drones remotely from the company’s headquarters in Houston, Paladin founder and CEO Divy Shrivastava told TechCrunch. This allowed Paladin’s technology to make a big difference despite Asheville’s closed streets and lack of cell phone or internet service on the ground.

“I think it painted a very clear picture for me of what the future of the drone industry is going to look like,” Shrivastava said. “We are happy that Asheville trusted us to help us.”

While capable of assisting in a natural disaster, Paladin is being introduced as a first response technology aimed at helping reduce the time between a 911 call and assistance on the way, Shrivastava said.

Palain’s software is designed to work with any drone, and to be easy to use, Shrivastava said. When a 911 dispatcher receives a call, a Paladin-powered drone is dispatched within 90 seconds to the scene. The public safety department can now see the situation in their office to find out what kinds of resources need to be sent, if any.

The motivation behind Paladin is personal. When Shrivastava was 17 years old and living in Ohio, his friend’s house burned down. While 911 was called immediately, first responders took a while to get there, going to the wrong address. The house eventually burned down and the experience stuck with Shrivastava.

“I was very concerned about this problem of not having a modern public safety infrastructure,” Shrivastava said. “It seemed obvious at the time, the problems were slow response times and lack of situational awareness. The drone has a camera and can bridge the gap in information. You will be looking at the live feed of what the emergency is.”

Shrivastava began working on this idea while doing the Thiel Fellowship, an incubator program led by Peter Thiel. He officially launched the company in 2018 and started selling in 2021. Since then the company has won contracts with several public safety departments, he said, and sees revenue roughly twice a quarter.

Paladin recently raised a $5.2 million seed round led by Gradient, Google’s original AI fund, with participation from Khosla Ventures, 1517, and Toyota Ventures, among others. The raise will be used to continue building Paladin’s software capabilities, as well as putting resources into getting the company’s name out there, Shrivastava said.

In addition to the funding, the company also announced a number of new capabilities for its drone software including the ability for drones to drop supplies via a 911 call, such as Narcan or life vests, and the ability for drones to see and navigate others. the plane.

Shrivastava said the company has not only helped reduce the time between a 911 call and its response but has also helped clear 10-25% of false 911 calls or misscalls that don’t require a response at all. He went on to say that eliminating unnecessary calls makes a big difference because many police departments are short of police officers and resources.

“Many departments have less than 50 sworn officers,” Shrivastava said. “Some technology that makes you 25% more efficient is important. What is easy to forget sometimes is that most of the country is small towns with limited resources. These are the problems they see all the time.”

Shrivastava knows what some people will think when they hear that Paladin is helping to equip police departments with drones — that they will be used for surveillance or general surveillance. He said Paladin was serious about the lawsuits using its software and said it was designed to only work in response to a 911 call.

He also added that they comply with drone laws in all 50 states and that the drones will not start taking video until they reach their destination.

Using technology to make public safety more efficient is an area that is seeing more interest from entrepreneurs as of late. Fixed another launch layout in this space with the same functionality. Prepared creates a system to assist 911 dispatchers by giving them a complete picture of what is happening at the scene of a call using video. The organization has raised more than $70 million.

Shrivastava said the need is there in public safety departments and that the startup is now receiving more technical requests per week.

“We are still early in terms of the overall market,” Shrivastava said. “We’re in a lot of cities right now and we’ve increased quickly, but that’s less than 0.1% of the market.”