What mountain hoisting lacks is not drone pilots, but entities that take responsibility: CloudSkyLink builds the fulfillment middle platform.
What mountainous UAV lifting transportation lacks is not drone operators, but the capability to convert high-risk non-standard operations into verifiable and accountable performance services. Mianyang Yunkonglian Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yunkonglian") focuses on mountainous UAV lifting transportation, and is positioned as a low-altitude operation matching, performance and risk control middle platform for mountain areas: it does not operate its own drone operators or equipment, nor produces hardware. On one end, it connects demand parties in infrastructure, forestry, mining, surveying and mapping and other industries, and on the other end, it brings together certified mountain drone operators and small operation teams. The team avoids fully competitive low-altitude application fields such as aerial photography and plant protection, and targets the demands for wood, building materials, small materials lifting and supporting mountain surveying, mapping and inspection in high mountain and canyon areas such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing and Xinjiang.
Yunkonglian is currently seeking angel round financing, with the financing entity being Mianyang Yunkonglian Technology Co., Ltd. The specific financing amount and equity ratio are to be discussed in person. The funds will be mainly invested in product R&D and mini-program iteration, regional survey team building, drone operator database operation, second-hand mall inspection and transaction guarantee system, compliance database construction, and supplementary working capital.
I. The pain point of mountainous lifting transportation lies not in transportation capacity, but in transaction and risk control
The land traffic conditions in mountainous areas are poor, and the transportation of materials by mules, horses and manpower has high cost, long cycle and prominent safety risks. UAV lifting transportation has become a feasible alternative in some engineering and forestry scenarios. However, the team found in front-line investigations that most of the existing low-altitude platforms are oriented to plains, suburbs and conventional aerial photography and plant protection scenarios, and there is still a lack of mature third-party standardized service platforms for mountain heavy-load lifting. Most transactions are still completed through WeChat groups, short videos and acquaintances' referrals.
The troubles on the demand side are concentrated in operator selection and responsibility assumption. Party A parties such as general infrastructure contractors, forest logging enterprises, mining enterprises and surveying and mapping institutions need a long time to screen certified drone operators with practical experience in mountain heavy-load operations, and it is difficult for them to independently assess the risks of terrain, wind field and airspace. There is no directly applicable template for airspace application materials, safety plans, emergency response plans, third-party liability insurance and responsibility division agreements. Situations such as drone operators breaking appointments temporarily, mismatched equipment and working conditions, and undeliverable delivery quality on site occur from time to time. Once a crash or property loss occurs, the division of rights and responsibilities is prone to ambiguity. Some of the customers contacted by the team have postponed the UAV scheme for this reason and continued to use mules, horses and manpower for transportation.
The troubles on the supply side are concentrated in order receiving and payment collection. There are relatively limited drone operators who have long been engaged in high mountain lifting transportation and are familiar with canyon wind fields and heavy-load operations, and most of their order sources rely on acquaintances' referrals, which is unstable. It is not uncommon that they cannot get complete on-site working condition data before receiving orders, and find that the terrain, wind direction and mounting conditions do not match the oral description after traveling a long distance, resulting in empty trip costs. After the operation is completed, there is a lack of third-party acceptance records, leading to a long payment collection cycle. Individuals have to go through many links for airspace reporting, with high back-and-forth communication costs.
Equipment circulation is the third easily overlooked bottleneck. The iteration of mountain heavy-load UAV models is fast, and drone operators and small operation teams often have idle heavy-load UAVs, power kits and mounting accessories. However, general second-hand channels lack inspection standards and transaction guarantees for heavy-load working conditions, so private transactions are prone to problems such as inconsistency between the actual machine and the description, unclear ownership, and no after-sales support afterwards.
From the perspective of user structure, the demand side includes general infrastructure contractors, forest logging enterprises, mining companies, surveying and mapping institutions in the mountainous areas of Southwest and Northwest China, as well as project parties of mountain photovoltaics and power renovation, whose demands for lifting and inspection are characterized by normalization and batch processing. The supply side includes individual drone operators and small UAV operation teams who hold valid flight certificates and have experience in mountain heavy-load operations. The mall users are also these drone operators and service providers.
II. Asset-light middle platform: no transportation capacity holding, no capital involvement, profiting from matching and risk control
Yunkonglian's core approach is to split high-risk non-standard operations such as mountain heavy-load lifting into verifiable links: qualification warehousing, on-site survey, order performance, acceptance and settlement, with traces left at every step. The platform itself does not hold transportation capacity, and its core assets are the classified drone operator database, survey reports, performance traces and regional airspace experience database, whose value is reflected in matching accuracy and process controllability.
In the matching and performance link, the drone operator resource database verifies the certificates, heavy-load operation resumes, mountain project cases and equipment lists of the warehoused drone operators, and establishes classification labels according to load capacity, familiar areas, operation types and historical safety records. When matching demands, teams with experience in the same terrain and the same load capacity are prioritized, and ordinary aerial photography drone operators who are not suitable for mountain heavy-load operations are filtered out. After the intention is confirmed, regional personnel go to the operation site for on-site survey, output a survey report including risk points, takeoff and landing point suggestions, operation windows and airspace application feasibility, and provide it to both Party A and the drone operator simultaneously. Demand release, quotation negotiation, agreement confirmation, operation filing, image return and completion acceptance are completed in the mini-program. The platform records the acceptance nodes, promotes both parties to settle in stages according to the agreement, and the order funds do not pass through the platform account.
In the compliance link, the platform does not independently build an airspace management system, and the relevant work is implemented by assisting to meet the local airspace management requirements: at this stage, it provides both the supply and demand sides with free application material templates, safety plans and emergency disposal plan templates, process guidance and material archiving, and does not handle approval on behalf of others or guarantee approval. At the same time, it assists in connecting operation insurance adapted to mountain heavy-load scenarios, and the final underwriting and claim settlement shall be subject to the insurance institution. Certificates, survey records and operation images are stored uniformly, and the service agreement divides the responsibility boundaries of the three parties: Party A, the drone operator service provider and the platform.
In the equipment circulation link, the second-hand mall adopts the consignment and commission sales mode, without stocking or self-operated sales. Before the equipment is put on shelves, ownership verification and basic working condition inspection are completed, the inspection items are implemented according to the platform's heavy-load working condition list, the body status and core component conditions are truthfully marked on the page, and it is clearly specified that the platform does not constitute equipment quality guarantee. The platform provides online matching, transaction witness and handover trace, and forms a circulation closed loop relying on its own drone operator traffic pool.
The business model consists of two sources of income. The matching service fee is extracted at the agreed proportion of the order amount after the order performance and acceptance are completed, which is currently in the small-scale test stage. The second-hand mall consignment commission is extracted according to the transaction amount after the complete machine and accessories are traded. The input costs of survey, compliance guidance and data archiving are covered by the income of these two businesses. The platform does not make money from information asymmetry, but by turning the matching, survey, trace leaving and acceptance of non-standard operations into reusable service capabilities.
III. Fully penetrate Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing first, then replicate to the mountainous areas in Northwest China
The project is led by He Ming. He is a serial entrepreneur with a veteran background, who has been rooted in Southwest China for a long time and is familiar with mountain engineering sites, local industrial resources and the implementation boundary of low-altitude policies. The team is equipped with full-time back-end developers responsible for the continuous iteration of the mini-program order middle platform, second-hand mall and file evidence storage system, and low-altitude compliance specialists to track the updates of airspace management policies and safety specifications in various regions. All core members participate in front-line orders and on-site surveys. The initial investment of the project comes from the founder's own funds, and while running the business relying on test orders, the team polishes service standards, risk control processes and mall transaction rules.
From the current progress, the platform has completed the full closed loop of demand docking, on-site survey, order dispatch, performance, acceptance and payment collection, and established the drone operator qualification review, safety rating and risk control ledger. The main framework of the mini-program has been launched, and the functions for the enterprise side and the drone operator side are continuously iterated. The transaction process, equipment verification standards and handover agreement template of the second-hand mall have been polished and entered the trial operation stage. In terms of resources and orders, the platform has completed the precipitation of certified mountain drone operator resources in key areas of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing, and multiple mountain lifting test orders have been successfully delivered with closed-loop payment collection. The project is currently in the small-scale business verification stage with a small order volume, which will continue to increase with subsequent market expansion. At the same time, the team continues to accumulate local airspace docking channels and precipitate airspace application experience records by region.
The implementation rhythm is divided into three stages. The first stage is the verification period, which takes Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Chongqing as the base, continuously expands the mountain heavy-load drone operator database, precipitates benchmark order cases, solidifies survey, risk control, quotation and acceptance into standard operation procedures, and simultaneously polishes the mini-program order module and the second-hand mall. The assessment indicators are order performance stability, safety accident control, mall transaction conversion and order business gross profit. In this stage, cross-regional expansion will not be carried out, and the highest-frequency Southwest market will be prioritized to be deepened and stabilized. The second stage is the expansion period, which replicates the verified mature matching and performance model to the mountain market in Xinjiang and Northwest China, extends the scenarios from lifting transportation to mountain pipeline inspection, geological survey, forest patrol and emergency material delivery. The middle platform adds a multi-regional data dashboard, and the mall expands the categories of accessories. The third stage is the ecological period, which precipitates the database of mountain terrain, wind field and safety cases, links with regulators, insurance institutions, UAV manufacturers and engineering Party A to build a service ecology, and exports the standardized middle platform capabilities of performance and risk control to the outside.
He Ming said that mountain UAV lifting transportation is essentially a high-risk special operation. The core of the platform is not to do information classified advertising, but to make every mountain low-altitude order controllable, traceable and with clear rights and responsibilities through standardized performance and data guidance. On the one hand, it enables mountain engineering customers to obtain compliant and safe operation deliveries, on the other hand, it reduces the order receiving risk of front-line professional drone operators and guarantees the payment collection channel, and at the same time opens up the circulation link of idle heavy-load equipment, promoting this niche and rigid-demand track to move from scattered private domain transactions to standardization.