22 Jun 2026
Some companies build products. BotLab Dynamics has been building moments.
Since 2016, this IIT Delhi-incubated startup has become the name behind the most talked-about drone shows in India, including Government ceremonies, Festival skies, Cricket stadiums, and Corporate milestones. The category keeps expanding because BotLab keeps pushing it. Here are the 7shows that made history.
This is where the story begins.
On January 29, 2022, Vijay Chowk, New Delhi, The Beating Retreat ceremony, which signifies the end of celebrations on Republic Day every year, saw a new sight this time. A thousand drones, all made in India, took the shape of the Globe, the Map of India, the National Flag, and Mahatma Gandhi’s portrait above Rashtrapati Bhavan. 10minutes that changed India's perception of its technology prowess.
The event happened in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence. Its significance on paper was great. It was a historic day for India when she became the fourth country in the world to witness a drone show of such scale, following the United States, Russia, and China.
Its significance in real terms was even more important. It marked the debut of Indian deep-tech in the grandest style.
An iconic milestone for Indian drone technology. The kind that comes once in a lifetime.
On March 18, 300 drones lifted into the night sky in Hyderabad.
What made this show worth talking about was not the number. It was the intent behind it. Zomato did not want a logo in the sky. They wanted to mark Ramadan in a way that the city would actually feel, and BotLab built that for them. A crescent moon, food-inspired formations, cultural symbols of the season and Zomato branding woven through it naturally, not slapped on top.
Aerial storytelling designed around the spirit of Ramadan, not just around a brand brief. The sky came alive with something that belonged to the occasion.
The campaign went wide on social media, generating millions of impressions and engagement that was largely organic. That is the difference between a good drone show and a great one.
Before cricket and drones were ever mentioned in the same sentence, there was this.
BotLab created what stands as the world's first drone show integrated directly with cricket entertainment, welcoming Lucknow Super Giants to their home ground. The concept that a cricket team's identity and the electricity of match day could be translated into aerial formations had to start somewhere. It started here.
Everything that followed in cricket drone show entertainment traces back to this. Someone had to prove the idea worked before everyone else could build on it. BotLab did that. One of the earliest and most consequential firsts in Indian sports entertainment, and it happened quietly, at an IPL ground in Lucknow.
Taking a drone show indoors sounds straightforward until you actually try it.
GPS behaves differently inside a venue. The margins are tighter. The ceiling is in the way. The risk profile is completely different from an open sky performance. Most teams would look at the constraints and walk away.
BotLab walked in. In January 2025, at the Kho Kho World Cup, India's first indoor drone show fleet took flight and, by doing so, opened a category that did not exist before. Drone shows alongside musicians. Drone shows inside arenas. Drone shows in spaces where nobody had thought to look for them.
The Kho Kho show was not BotLab's biggest by drone count. But in terms of what it unlocked, it may be the most significant door they have pushed open yet.
1,00,000Tata EVs on Indian roads. That is the kind of milestone that deserves more than a press release.
750 drones went up to mark it. The show was built around the meaning of the number. A hundred thousand electric vehicles, Tata's commitment to cleaner mobility made visible in light above a crowd that came to celebrate. Not a product advertisement. An aerial story about what the milestone actually represented.
It became one of the most talked-about corporate branding drone shows in India. The reason is simple. The storytelling matched the occasion. When a brand has something real to say, and the drone show is designed to say it properly, the result sticks. This one did.
Eastern India had not seen a drone show like this before.
600 drones over Kolkata during Durga Puja. The city of joy during its biggest festival. Pandals on every street, colour everywhere, the whole city alive with it. Into that, BotLab sent a swarm choreographed to the visual language of Pujo. Formations of Maa Durga. The battle with Mahishasura. Reds and golds in sequences that echoed the spirit of the festival rather than competing with it.
Eastern India's biggest drone show at the time. But the more quietly impressive thing is that it worked with Durga Puja, not alongside it. That takes more craft than scale alone.
The first time BotLab flew over Rashtrapati Bhavan, it was 1,000 drones and a national milestone. The second time, it was 3,500. The world's second-largest drone show at the time. And it drew attention well beyond India's borders. The same venue as before and three and a half times the scale.
This was no longer a story about what Indian technology could do domestically. This was India competing with the biggest drone shows anywhere in the world, with drones built right here. The show drew the kind of attention that changes how an industry is perceived internationally.
Two shows. One venue. Both iconic for completely different reasons.
Seven presentations. Seven different settings. Government ceremony, Ramadan campaign, cricket grounds in Lucknow, sports complex indoors, corporate achievement, celebrations in Kolkata, and lastly, a world record from the place where it all began.
The commonality does not lie in the size of the presentation. In some cases, it was as many as 300 drones; in others, 3,500. The common denominator here was that in each case, it was something unique, something which no one had done before. And not because BotLab found something that worked and repeated it, but they kept finding new challenges to overcome.
That is basically the story of Indian drone show technology in one company. The categories will keep expanding. But these seven are the ones that built the foundation.
