Business
From florist to drone maker: How the weapon became so mainstream
Gideon LongBusiness reporter
Kseniia KalmusThe ongoing conflict in Ukraine is often described as the world’s “first drone war”. It has led to a continuing huge growth in the production of military drones, both within and outside Ukraine.
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Kseniia Kalmus was a floral artist. She co-owned a flower shop in Kyiv and travelled around Europe showcasing her floral arrangements.
Now, she makes drones for use against the Russians.
“It was just an obvious decision for me,” she tells the BBC from the Ukrainian capital. “I just wanted to help my country, help my people and the military.”
Ms Kalmus says that after the war began back in February 2022, she raised money to buy anything the Ukrainian soldiers asked for, from vehicles to medicine and uniforms. But as time went by, the requests from the front line changed.
“I realised that all the requests were for FPV [first-person view] drones,” she recalled. “So I started raising money for that, specifically, and then I decided to produce them.”
These days, she and her fellow volunteers churn out hundreds of drones each month – small quadcopters with plastic X-shaped frames and a rotor blade on each corner – the kind of thing you might use to take aerial photographs at your wedding. Strap a small bomb to it though, and it becomes a deadly weapon.
Combat drones, delivery drones, surveillance drones, underwater drones – drones have become a key weapon of war globally, whether it be small hand-operated quadcopters, or high-tech military drones that look like small, unmanned aeroplanes and can travel long distances and cause enormous damage on impact.
Before 2022 there were just a handful of companies in Ukraine making drones. Now, there are hundreds. Kyiv says that around three-quarters of Russian losses on the battlefield are caused, not by bullets or conventional artillery, but by drones.
“This has been the first full-blown drone war,” says Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, and the author of several reports on drone warfare.
“There are a ton of mom-and-pop shops in Ukraine where people are making drones and assembling them in their apartments, in their garages and donating them to the forces. They’ve become the go-to weapon for the Ukrainians.”
And not just the Ukrainians. Drones are increasingly being used in conflicts from the Middle East, to Myanmar and Sudan.
“You see European states talking about building drone walls and other countries seeking to acquire drones because they provide them with a cheap form of air power.” Ms Pettyjohn says.
AFP via Getty ImagesThe world’s biggest defence contractors, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, are taking note, as are smaller drone-makers like US-based AeroVironment, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Its share price has soared more than four-fold since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In Europe, Portugal’s Tekever became what is known as a unicorn company this year – valued at more than $1bn (£760m) – and Germany’s Stark is expanding its drone-making operations. It is due to open a new factory in Swindon in southwest England at the end of November.
Meanwhile, the UK government announced last year that it would be spending £4.5bn on new military drones.
“The sector is growing really quickly,” said Mike Armstrong, Stark’s managing director for the UK. “I think drones are the future of warfare. Legacy systems – artillery, tanks – they all have a place, but what we’ve seen is a major innovation which is not going away anytime soon.”
The growth in drone use for military ends has spawned its antithesis – a counter-drone industry. For every drone launched in anger on the battlefield, there is usually someone trying to jam its radio signal or shoot it down.
Anti-drone technology is also increasingly being sought by Western nations to protect key infrastructure sites. The Belgian government announced on 7 November that it was urgently trying to acquire drone defences after drone sightings forced it to temporarily close Brussels Airport.
Oleg Vornik is the CEO of DroneShield, an Australian counter-drone company.
“We make hardware and software that you can carry in your hands, you can put on a vehicle or around the edge of a military base to detect and safely take down small drones,” he says.
Since 2022, DroneShield’s share price has soared 15-fold. “We are the only public-listed counter-drone company around the world, which has helped us,” Mr Vornik adds.
As well as supplying Ukraine, Mr Vornik says DroneShield is seeing increased interest from countries in the Asian Pacific, worried about China’s use of surveillance drones. DroneShield also sells to the governments of Colombia and Mexico, which use its technology to protect facilities from the use of drones by criminal gangs.
DroneShieldMunin Dynamics is a much smaller start-up working in the same counter-drone space. Its founder is Magnus Freyer, a former paratrooper in the Norwegian army.
“We’re building a system that every soldier, whether they are a newly mobilised Ukrainian or an experienced Nato soldier, can use to defend themselves from drones,” he says. “It’s a small system that you can have a couple of in your vest, to shoot down the drone when it’s coming in.”
Experts say the next big development in drone technology is likely to be driven by artificial intelligence (AI).
At the moment, many drones used in conflicts are small, cheap devices that have to be guided to their targets by an operator – a human being with a remote control who needs to be within range of the drone, potentially placing them in danger.
But Ms Pettyjohn says that will change. “That is going to be the next real shift.
“Right now, really smart artificial intelligence is not very extensive. But you are going to start seeing groups of drones controlled by one operator, and then eventually fully autonomous drones that can collaborate.”
In the meantime, former floral artist Kseniia Kalmus says she will continue to assemble drones for use on the front line.
“I miss flowers very much and I miss that previous life, of course,” she says. “A lot of my friends, me as well, changed totally, from flower artists or from dancers to drone producers.
“But this is a question of existence. We just fight for our country, for our existence, for our culture.”
The combined market valuation of six of India’s top-10 most valued companies rose by Rs 74,111.57 crore last week, with Reliance Industries emerging as the biggest gainer. The rally came during a volatile trading week in which the BSE Sensex advanced 177.36 points, or 0.23%.According to news agency ANI, Reliance Industries added Rs 24,696.89 crore to its valuation, taking its total market capitalisation to Rs 18,33,117.70 crore.Tata Consultancy Services saw its valuation jump by Rs 19,338.68 crore to Rs 8,38,401.33 crore, while ICICI Bank added Rs 14,515.93 crore to reach a market capitalisation of Rs 9,06,901.32 crore.The valuation of Life Insurance Corporation of India climbed Rs 9,076.37 crore to Rs 5,14,443.69 crore.Meanwhile, Bajaj Finance gained Rs 3,797.83 crore, taking its valuation to Rs 5,70,515.57 crore, while Larsen & Toubro added Rs 2,685.87 crore to Rs 5,40,228.21 crore.
Airtel, HUL among laggards
On the losing side, Bharti Airtel witnessed the sharpest erosion in market value, losing Rs 20,229.67 crore to settle at Rs 11,40,295.49 crore.The market valuation of Hindustan Unilever declined by Rs 16,212.18 crore to Rs 5,17,380 crore, while State Bank of India lost Rs 12,784.4 crore in valuation to Rs 8,76,077.92 crore.HDFC Bank also saw its market capitalisation dip by Rs 2,094.35 crore to Rs 11,79,974.90 crore.Reliance Industries retained its position as India’s most valued company, followed by HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, TCS, Bajaj Finance, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever and LIC.
Markets end volatile week with modest gains
Ajit Mishra, SVP, research at Religare Broking Ltd, said markets ended the week with marginal gains amid a “highly volatile and range-bound trading environment”.“Benchmark indices witnessed sharp intraday swings throughout the week, driven by persistent rupee weakness, mixed global cues, sectoral rotation, and continued uncertainty around inflation and interest rates,” he said, as quoted by ANI.Benchmark indices recovered on Friday, with the Sensex closing 231.99 points higher at 75,415.35 and the NSE Nifty rising 64.60 points to settle at 23,719.30.Analysts cited optimism surrounding possible progress in US-Iran peace negotiations and easing Middle East tensions as factors supporting market sentiment.Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Investments, was quoted by news agency PTI as saying that domestic markets traded with a “mild positive bias” due to buying at lower levels and constructive global cues.“Globally, the AI investment theme remained the primary driver, while domestically, financial stocks led the gains,” he said.Brent crude prices climbed 2.3% to $104.7 per barrel, while foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold equities worth Rs 1,891.21 crore in the previous session.
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LAHORE:
Imagine a country sitting at the crossroads of South Asia and Central Asia, with a population of 250 million, abundant natural resources, and a GDP exceeding $450 billion, yet struggling to convince even its own businesspeople to invest at home.
That is Pakistan’s continued uncomfortable reality in 2026, and the way things are going, the business community believes that even after elevating higher, in the past one year due to perfect diplomacy, the government needs to take strict action against those civil servants and state officials, who still try to slow the pace of overseas and local investment as well as development work, which has jeopardised the growth of the country.
“Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan fell 31% during the first 10 months of financial year 2025-26, with total inflows coming in at $1.409 billion against $2.035 billion during the same period a year earlier,” said Mian Shafqat Ali, Founder of the Pakistan Industrial and Traders Association Front. He raised alarm over what he calls a deepening investment crisis, warning that both local and foreign investment has dipped to one of its lowest levels in recent memory.
He added that the root cause of this decline is not a lack of opportunity, but a system that actively discourages investors at every step. “The real obstacle in the way of investment is the layers upon layers of bureaucratic hurdles. Without removing these barriers, the dream of increasing investment cannot be realised.”
He noted that investors, both domestic and foreign, are deeply sensitive to the environment they operate in, and Pakistan’s current legal and regulatory framework, unpredictable energy policies, fluctuating exchange rates, and ad hoc government decisions have created an atmosphere of uncertainty that keeps capital away.
The business community by and large thinks that once the US-Israel-Iran conflict is settled fully, Pakistan can have better opportunities; however they simultaneously say that to grab those opportunities, “we need to settle our systems, which are dominated by anti-investment and anti-business culture”.
There are systems, which welcome and protect overseas as well as local investment; those societies belong to the first world or second world; “unfortunately here in Pakistan we are still unable to manage the smooth flow of Chinese investments, whom we call ‘iron brothers’,” said Bilal Hanif, a Lahore-based businessman.
“We keep building new institutions and launching new investment windows, but nothing changes on the ground because the real problem is structural. A foreign investor does not just look at your pitch; he looks at your court system, your tax regime, and whether rules will be the same two years from now. On all these counts, we are falling short,” he said.
Pakistan has averaged barely $2 billion in annual FDI over the past 26 years; a figure that expert bodies like the Pakistan Business Council say should be at least $12 billion per year, or roughly 3% of GDP, to meet basic development benchmarks. Meanwhile, regional competitors such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and even smaller economies like Bangladesh have consistently attracted far greater inflows, benefiting from predictable regulations, stronger investor protection, and long-term policy continuity.
Mian Shafqat Ali was clear that the failure does not rest with any single institution. He said the problem is not the fault of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) or any other body, but rather the deeply entrenched systems that make doing business in Pakistan unnecessarily complicated.
“Until policymakers are willing to make difficult structural and political decisions, investment will remain weak, no matter how many new institutions are created,” he warned.
What investors consistently ask for is not complicated; it is political stability, simple regulations, and confidence that policies of today will not be reversed tomorrow. Pakistan, unfortunately, has struggled to offer any of these in a reliable manner. Frequent political disruptions, leadership changes, and policy discontinuity have created uncertainty that discourages long-term capital, and the capital does not avoid Pakistan because of a lack of opportunity, it avoids uncertainty.
“Government should move beyond announcements and focus on real structural reforms, overhauling the regulatory framework, simplifying business registration processes, ensuring energy availability at competitive rates and most importantly, providing a stable and consistent policy environment as without fixing the foundation, everything else is meaningless,” Ali added.
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