DroneCast, the drone advertising startup, wants to save lives

Imagine a world where, when someone has a medical emergency, a fleet of support comes barreling through — all sparked by a wearable device.

Emergency medical technicians. Good Samaritans. A drone transporting medical equipment.

That’s the latest idea from DroneCast, a startup founded by Drexel undergrad Raj Singh that wants to be the “Google of drones.” (They won’t stop at healthcare, he said. “This is just one step on a huge ladder.”) The angel-backed startup is raising $100,000 to make their idea a reality. So far, its crowdfunding campaign has raised $125.

They’re also soliciting feedback from the public.

“Although we can go to private investors for something like this and easily get funding, we don’t want to lose sight of the actual goal here… to save lives!” DroneCast wrote on its Kickstarter page. “If we involve investors, they will simply want to see it being monetized. As soon as this happens, the quality of the product decreases and the original goal is lost. This is why we want to have the Kickstarter community involved.”

Singh, who grew up near Princeton, N.J., used to be a volunteer EMT.

DroneCast’s bread and butter is drone advertising. They’re slated to make $1.5 million in revenue this year, Singh said, and their average campaign is $25,000-$50,000, where a company will rent multiple drones from DroneCast over multiple days. Singh declined to name any customers, but here’s at least one: the BeachGlow Music Festival in Wildwood, N.J., which tapped DroneCast to drop glow sticks on partygoers, as well as fly a 10-foot-tall banner around, as Fortune reported. DroneCast has also gotten national press hits in Mashable and ABC.

The company, which raised $1 million from angel investors (that Singh declined to name), opened an office at 1700 Market St., Suite 1005. DroneCast has 15 full-time employees.

As for the legality of Dronecast’s business, Singh’s three lawyers have told him he has yet to worry because of a previous, similar case, where the Federal Aviation Administration did not succeed in fining someone using a drone to film, according to the Fortune report.

Singh, 19, is returning to Drexel after a leave of absence. He said it’s in part due to pressure from his parents but that he’s also been speaking to Drexel faculty and administrators about his situation and that they’ve been very supportive. Singh will attend Drexel’s new Close School of Entrepreneurship in January.