China’s DJI, the world’s leading commercial drone company, doubled domestic sales of agricultural drones last year and is now increasing spending on promoting its products to Chinese farmers as the consumer market is projected to slow.
DJI, which was reportedly valued at $15bn at its latest funding round, and has a 70 per cent share of the global commercial drone market, sold 20,000 agricultural drones for spraying pesticides in China last year, and about 2,000 in Japan and South Korea.
That was double the amount it sold in 2017, said Yasha Chen, sales director of the company’s agriculture department. DJI planned to spend more than Rmb20m ($2.98m) to subsidise agricultural sales agents and shops this year, he added.