In October 2014, India’s aviation regulator effectively banned civilians from flying drones — a ruling that should have grounded a company whose entire business was flying cameras. Ten years later that same company, Quidich Innovation Labs, was building the software that let fans watch the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 on an Apple Vision Pro headset, an experience stitched from 2.2 million data points captured per match.
Quidich began in 2013 as a side project between two roommates with a rented drone and no clients, stayed bootstrapped for roughly eleven years, and only took outside capital for the first time in 2024. In between, it became the aerial and augmented-reality partner for the IPL, the BCCI, the ICC, Sky Sports and SuperSport, and — by its own account — the first company anywhere to put broadcast-grade AR graphics on a live drone feed. This is how a filmmaker’s hobby survived a national drone ban and turned into a sports-broadcast technology business.
Quick facts
| Company | Quidich Innovation Labs Private Limited (CIN U74120MH2015PTC268088) |
| Founded | Venture started 2013; incorporated 4 September 2015 (MCA) |
| Founder(s) | Rahat Kulshreshtha and Gaurav Mehta |
| Businesses | Broadcast drones (CopterQam), ground camera systems (BuggyQam), AR/player-tracking graphics (Spatio, StiQy, HyperView), immersive apps (HypeReality) |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹50 crore–₹100 crore band for FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025), as reported by Tracxn and The CompanyCheck citing MCA data |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Not disclosed in absolute terms; net profit reported up 65.8% in FY24, with a net profit margin of about 0.8% (The CompanyCheck) |
| Listed | Private (unlisted); status Active as of September 2026 (MCA/Tofler) |
| Market value / last valuation | Not publicly disclosed; total external funding of about $2.62 million across two rounds (Tracxn) |
| Key shareholders | Founders hold about 72.9%; investors include Centre Court Capital (lead), plus BlueFort Financial, Sprack Ventures and LetsVenture (Tracxn) |
What they do
Quidich sells camera systems and graphics software to sports broadcasters and rights holders. It puts specialist cameras on drones and ground-based buggies, then overlays real-time augmented-reality graphics and player-tracking data on top of the live feed. The customer is the production chain behind a televised match — the host broadcaster, the league and the rights holder — not the fan directly.
- CopterQam: broadcast-grade aerial drone camera, used for live cricket coverage in India (company product pages).
- BuggyQam: a remotely operated ground buggy carrying a broadcast camera for low, moving pitch-side shots (company product pages).
- Spatio: the AR-on-drone system used at IPL 2020, described by the company as the first time all games in a season used augmented reality on a drone camera (Quidich blog).
- StiQy: a player-tracking graphics tool that detects a player on any existing broadcast camera and attaches live stats to them as they move, with no specialist camera hardware required (Broadcast, SVG Europe, 2023).
- HyperView: spatial-relationship graphics that visualise field gaps and, at IPL 2023, the height of a six for the first time in cricket broadcast (Quidich blog, 2023).
- HypeReality: the immersive engine behind the ICC Immersive app on Apple Vision Pro at the 2024 T20 World Cup (SVG, ICC, June 2024).
The origin
The company traces to 2013, when Rahat Kulshreshtha and Gaurav Mehta were roommates and Kulshreshtha was an aspiring filmmaker shooting music videos. The first drone was a DJI Phantom he had rented to capture an aerial shot of an Audi. What started as a way to get a shot became a question: could a small team fly cameras for a living in a country where nobody was doing it yet?
Kulshreshtha has described the founding insight in plain terms — that it did not have to be a choice between entrepreneurship and creativity, that it could be both. That framing matters because it explains the company’s later shape: not a pure drone-hardware firm and not a pure software house, but a broadcast-craft business that treats the aerial shot and the graphic layered on it as one storytelling product. The legal entity, Quidich Innovation Labs Private Limited, was incorporated in Mumbai on 4 September 2015 (MCA records).
The struggle years
The hardest facts of Quidich’s early life are regulatory, not commercial. In October 2014 India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) restricted civil use of drones by non-government users, citing safety and security gaps — an effective ban for a company whose product was a flying camera. The regulatory vacuum stretched for years: a first draft policy in 2016 defined drones as Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems but was criticised for heavy paperwork and slow, multi-department clearances that discouraged small operators (Geospatial World; ORF; press reports).
For a drone-first startup, that is close to an existential setback. Two concrete pressure points stand out:
- 2014–2018 regulatory limbo: flying commercially meant working around a blanket restriction and case-by-case permissions, which limited scale and made every shoot a compliance exercise.
- Conditional, expiry-dated exemptions: even once cricket work began, the BCCI and Quidich operated under a conditional exemption from the Aircraft Rules, 1937 for aerial filming, granted in early 2021 and valid only until 31 December 2021 (Business Standard; Press Information Bureau, February 2021). Permission was temporary and had to be renewed, not assumed.
The company stayed bootstrapped through this period, funding growth from project revenue rather than investors — a decision that kept it small but also kept it alive when the regulatory path was unclear.
The turning point
The single event that changed the trajectory was IPL 2020, played inside a bio-secure bubble across three venues in the UAE with no crowds. With stadiums empty, the broadcast leaned harder on aerial angles and on-screen storytelling to hold viewers. Quidich’s Spatio system put augmented reality on the drone feed, and by the company’s account it was the first time every game in an IPL season used AR on a drone camera.
The numbers on either side of that moment:
- Before: aerial drone shots were a supplementary camera angle; AR graphics on a live drone feed were not standard.
- After: AR-on-drone ran across the full season, and IPL 2020 (Season 13) drew a reported 28% jump in viewership versus the prior edition (Quidich blog, IPL 2020).
From there the tech stack compounded season on season: drone AR at IPL 2022, then HyperView and StiQy at IPL 2023 — where HyperView showed the height of a six on screen for the first time. The second, larger turning point came in June 2024, when the ICC launched its ICC Immersive app on Apple Vision Pro for the Men’s T20 World Cup, built by Quidich and branded HypeReality, letting headset users relive Super 8 highlights inside a rendered stadium from 2.2 million data points collected per match (SVG; ICC; Broadcast, June 2024). A company banned from flying in 2014 was now supplying a headset-native product to the sport’s global governing body.
The money behind it
Quidich is unusual for how little outside money it took and how late. It was bootstrapped from its 2013 start until 2024, when it raised its first institutional round.
- Maiden round — Series A, 2024: led by Centre Court Capital, announced in June 2024; the amount was not disclosed (Entrepreneur India; Inc42; ZeeBiz, June 2024).
- Total raised: about $2.62 million across two rounds, as tracked by Tracxn — small by startup standards and consistent with a business that grew on customer revenue rather than venture funding.
- Named backers: Centre Court Capital (lead), with BlueFort Financial, Sprack Ventures and LetsVenture also listed among investors, plus angels including Sundar Raman (Tracxn).
- Ownership: founders retain roughly 72.9% of the company, with funds and angels holding minority stakes (Tracxn).
- Stated use of funds: expanding into new sporting events across geographies and building out the technology stack (Entrepreneur India; ZeeBiz).
No public valuation has been disclosed for either round. MCA filings show a paid-up capital of about ₹99,980 against authorised capital of ₹10 lakh, and a board that includes founder Rahat Kulshreshtha alongside a nominee director, Mustafa Ghouse, per registry data (Tofler/MCA).
How it makes money
Quidich earns primarily from broadcast services and technology deployments contracted per tournament or event. The economics work like a specialist production vendor with proprietary software, rather than a subscription software company.
- Money in: fees from broadcasters, leagues and rights holders (for example Star/BCCI for the IPL, and the ICC for world events) to supply drone and buggy camera coverage and to run AR graphics and immersive products during a tournament.
- Costs out: skilled crews, camera and drone hardware, travel and logistics across venues, regulatory permissions, and R&D on the AR and tracking software. Headcount was reported at about 129 employees in 2024 (registry-linked profiles), which signals a people- and craft-heavy cost base.
- Where the margin sits: the proprietary software layer — StiQy, HyperView, HypeReality — is what differentiates Quidich from a generic camera-hire vendor and supports pricing power; the raw drone flying is increasingly commoditised.
- The part people get wrong: Quidich is not a consumer app or a drone manufacturer. Fans never pay it. Its product is the broadcast enhancement itself, sold business-to-business into the production chain, which is why its revenue tracks the sports-events calendar rather than user growth.
The numbers
Quidich is a private company and does not publish absolute financials; registry aggregators report its figures as bands and year-on-year changes rather than exact rupee amounts. What is disclosed shows fast growth off a small base. Its FY25 revenue sits in the ₹50 crore–₹100 crore band (about $5.2 million–$10.4 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics), per Tracxn and The CompanyCheck citing MCA data. The table below shows what is verifiable; figures are growth rates and bands, not fabricated absolutes.
| Metric (unit: ₹ crore / % change) | FY23 | FY24 | FY25 |
| Revenue level | Not disclosed (band ₹1–100 cr) | Not disclosed (band ₹1–100 cr) | ₹50–100 cr band |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | +105.5% | +58.7% (net sales +62.0%) | Reported ~30% (trailing CAGR) |
| Net profit change (YoY) | +230.6% | +65.8% | Not disclosed |
| EBITDA change (YoY) | Not disclosed | +74.9% | Not disclosed |
| Net worth change (YoY) | Not disclosed | +261.1% | Not disclosed |
Reported operating margin for FY24 was about 3.0% and net profit margin about 0.8% (The CompanyCheck), which fits a services-led business turning a thin profit on fast-rising revenue. Sources: Tracxn, The CompanyCheck and Tofler, all citing MCA filings; treat the bands as the ceiling of what is public, not precise revenue.
Where the money comes from
Quidich’s revenue concentration is by sport, client and geography rather than by consumer segment. The disclosed picture:
- By sport: cricket dominates — the IPL, plus ICC world events such as the Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 and the Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 (Catch Map graphics). The company has been expanding beyond cricket into Bundesliga football and LIV Golf (Entrepreneur; company material).
- By client: anchored on the BCCI/Star relationship for the IPL and on the ICC for global tournaments, with international broadcasters including Sky Sports and Sunset+Vine in the UK, Channel 7 in Australia and SuperSport in South Africa (ZeeBiz; company site).
- By geography: India-led, with a growing international footprint across the UK, Australia and South Africa, and product deployments tied to specific tournaments.
The surprise is how event-shaped the business is. Because fees are contracted per tournament, revenue can swing with the sports calendar and with which rights cycles a broadcaster is running — a strong IPL or World Cup year lifts the whole business, and the market it plays in is large: global sports media rights were valued at about $56 billion, with the sports-broadcast technology market projected to reach roughly $114 billion by 2030 (ZeeBiz/Entrepreneur, citing figures from the 2024 funding announcement).
The risks
- Client concentration and event dependence: a large share of visibility and revenue is tied to a handful of relationships (BCCI/Star, ICC) and to the tournament calendar. Losing a marquee contract, or a rights cycle changing hands, would hit revenue directly because fees are contracted per event rather than recurring.
- Regulatory exposure: the business depends on drone-flight permissions that are conditional and time-limited — the BCCI/Quidich cricket exemption granted in 2021 was valid only to 31 December 2021 and had to be renewed. Any tightening of Indian drone rules, or a security-driven restriction like the 2014 ban, directly constrains the core aerial product (Business Standard; PIB; DGCA history).
- Thin margins against bigger, well-funded rivals: reported FY24 net margin of roughly 0.8% leaves little buffer, while the AR-graphics and broadcast-tech space includes far larger global players. Quidich’s differentiation rests on proprietary software (StiQy, HyperView, HypeReality); if that edge is matched or the drone layer commoditises, pricing power erodes.
The takeaway
The transferable lesson from Quidich is about sequencing capital and craft. A company that was, in effect, outlawed at birth chose to stay bootstrapped for more than a decade, compounded a single technical advantage — putting graphics and data on a moving camera — across season after season of a captive event calendar, and only raised outside money once the product was proven at the scale of the IPL and an ICC world event. The order matters: it built the moat first and took the cheque second. For founders in regulated, hardware-touching businesses, that patience is not caution for its own sake; it is what lets you own most of your company when the turning point finally arrives.
Frequently asked questions
What does Quidich Innovation Labs do?
It supplies sports broadcasters and rights holders with specialist cameras on drones and buggies, plus real-time augmented-reality graphics and player-tracking software. Its products include CopterQam, BuggyQam, Spatio, StiQy, HyperView and the HypeReality immersive engine.
Who founded Quidich and when?
Rahat Kulshreshtha and Gaurav Mehta started the venture in 2013 as roommates using a rented DJI drone. The company, Quidich Innovation Labs Private Limited, was incorporated in Mumbai on 4 September 2015 (MCA).
How much money has Quidich raised?
It was bootstrapped until 2024, when it raised its first institutional round, a Series A led by Centre Court Capital (amount undisclosed). Total external funding is about $2.62 million across two rounds, per Tracxn; founders retain roughly 72.9% ownership.
What is Quidich’s revenue?
As a private company it discloses only bands and growth rates. Its FY25 revenue (year ended 31 March 2025) sits in the ₹50 crore–₹100 crore band per Tracxn and The CompanyCheck citing MCA data, after reported revenue growth of about 105.5% in FY23 and 58.7% in FY24.
What was Quidich’s role at the 2024 T20 World Cup?
It built the ICC Immersive app on Apple Vision Pro, branded HypeReality, letting headset users relive Super 8 highlights inside a rendered stadium using ball- and player-tracking data — about 2.2 million data points per match (SVG; ICC, June 2024).
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings via Tofler and The CompanyCheck — incorporation, directors, capital, financial bands and growth rates (accessed September 2026)
- Tracxn — funding rounds, investors, ownership and revenue band, Quidich profile (September 2026)
- Entrepreneur India — “Quidich Innovation Labs Secure Centre Court Capital Investment in Series A” (June 2024)
- Inc42 — “Quidich Nets Maiden Funding To Boost Its Tech Stack In Sports Broadcasting” (June 2024)
- ZeeBiz — “Centre Court Capital leads investment in Quidich Innovation Labs” (June 2024)
- Entrepreneur (US) — feature on founders Rahat Kulshreshtha and Gaurav Mehta and the ICC/Apple partnership (2024)
- Sports Video Group and SVG Europe — Apple Vision Pro ICC Immersive/HypeReality coverage (June 2024) and IPL AR coverage (2022)
- ICC — “ICC launches new ICC Immersive app on Apple Vision Pro” media release (June 2024)
- Broadcast (broadcastnow.co.uk) — StiQy reveal for the IPL and ICC Immersive VR app coverage (2023–2024)
- Quidich Innovation Labs — company blog and product pages: IPL 2020 Spatio, IPL 2023 HyperView and StiQy, Cricket World Cup 2023 Catch Map (accessed September 2026)
- Business Standard and Press Information Bureau — BCCI/Quidich conditional drone exemption under the Aircraft Rules, 1937 (February 2021)
- Geospatial World and Observer Research Foundation — India drone regulation history, including the October 2014 DGCA restriction (2016–2018)
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