BEIJING (TDI), December 24th (www.thediplomaticinsight.com) – – Chinese online life service provider Meituan announced on Wednesday that it has started its first overseas drone delivery service, a milestone to leverage advanced and green Chinese digital technologies in the low-altitude economy worldwide.
Meituan said its drone delivery service subsidiary Keeta Drone had obtained a commercial license for Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone deliveries from Dubai’s civil aviation authority, and had launched providing fast and efficient drone delivery of medicine, food, and other essential items in designated pilot areas.
Mao Yinian, vice president of Meituan and president of Keeta Drone, said that the company has not only introduced its self-developed aircraft, automated airport, and intelligent scheduling system to Dubai but has also made significant modifications to adapt to local challenges, such as the high temperatures.
The low-altitude economy, including flying cars and drone deliveries, has seen robust development in China in recent years, as many local governments have adopted supportive policies to explore the new consumption-upgrading frontier.
Meituan started exploring drones for seamless air-ground local deliveries in 2017 and began its first commercial delivery service in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen in 2021.
As of December 2024, Keeta Drone operates fifty-three routes in major Chinese cities, having completed more than 400,000 deliveries.
The service offers customers a wide array of products and spans a variety of locations, ranging from residential areas, offices, libraries to tourist spots such as the Great Wall.
The size of China’s low-altitude economy as of the end of last year was estimated at over 500 billion yuan (about $69.53 billion), with its scale likely to rise to two trillion yuan by 2030, the Civil Aviation Administration of China noted.