Washington-area resident and Uber/Lyft driver Adhar Chandra Bhatt is driven by an insatiable desire to invent.
The 33-year-old’s specific focus is on designing airborne drones, which he calls his “frones,” or friendly drones, that can rescue those who become injured or isolated in hard-to-reach areas.
Born to a modest family in Nepal, Bhatt now holds dual U.S.-Nepalese citizenship and eloquently describes Nepal as “my mother country for whom I wish to give the sky” (by virtue of his frones that can ferry injured and stranded passengers through the air). America, he says, is “my father country for whom I wish to give the universe.” By this he means his next generation frones that can explore outer space.
Coming from most people, you might think these words were that of an arrogant or slightly unstable mind. But nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to Bhatt. This young man believes in dreams made real.
Bhatt first found his penchant for building things that spin and fly while age 7. When his mother fell seriously ill in rural Nepal, the family wasn’t able to afford medical care, so Bhatt took matters into his own hands. He adapted a toy car to power a makeshift fan hoisted onto a bamboo rod and thus brought his mother’s fever down.
Where did this passion come from?
Well, Bhatt’s family only allowed him to watch National Geographic and the Discovery Channel on television. He watched every episode. (He admits his schoolwork suffered).
“Driven” is definitely the best word to describe this intrepid inventor.
After all, when Bhatt isn’t driving himself forward on the design board, he’s driving passengers for ride-sharing firms Uber and Lyft. That’s where I met Bhatt, when he drove me to the airport in early April. We later met up with another D.C.-area resident who Bhatt had driven, an Anglo-American filmmaker, Kathy Sorley.
Unlike some Uber or Lyft drivers, however, Bhatt has no complaints about his work. Without the ability to turn on his app and find riders, the inventor says, he would be unable to focus on his true passion. Bhatt seems to enjoy the synchronicity of driving in an innovative industry as he pursues his own passenger-focused innovations.
And that takes us back to the “frones.”
Always obsessed with the sky, Bhatt’s first aerial invention was a motorcycle engine-driven ultra-light aircraft he built at 16 years old. While the invention gained national attention in the Nepali press, Bhatt’s aspirations were restrained by regulation: Nepal’s government wouldn’t allow him to test his aircraft. The photos below show the effort the auspicious 16 year old went to.
To some degree, Bhatt faces that same challenge today.
Respectful of U.S. federal regulations restricting the operation of drones, the inventor has kept his frone plans on the drawing board. That said, Bhatt insists his prototype designs are groundbreaking. They will, he says, be able to pick up those drowning in rough water, or stranded in the high Himalayas, or even soldiers wounded on the battlefield. “I think,” Bhatt says in typically understated terms, “the families [of the rescued] might like that.”
The understatedness speaks to Bhatt’s character.
Although exceptionally bright (he lost me when discussing advanced aerodynamics and explaining his hobby of reading manuals!), Bhatt speaks in soft, purposeful sentences and is at pains to disabuse any notion of profit motive. Instead, his is a personal quest. As he left Nepal, Bhatt’s father told him, “You’re going to America to fly, but try to touch the stars.”
“It took me a long time to truly understand what my father meant,” Bhatt tells me, “but now I do.”
Namely, that America isn’t just a place of limitless dreams, it’s a place where such dreams can be made reality. And whenever Bhatt struggles with a technical issue he pushes it to the back of his mind confident that “I solve everything in my dreams.” In these early hours when most of us are deep in our REM cycles, Bhatt is in and out of sleep, jotting down new ideas and sketching design alterations. Then he’s back on the clock, finding fares on the road.
Bhatt is under no illusions of the challenges he faces, but his is a very American confidence. Asked whether his frone design has the power and structural reliability to pick up and carry multiple humans safely, Bhatt smiles.
“Yes.”
Will he succeed?
“I will try my best, and if I fail, then I will not have failed because I will know I have tried my best.”
In an era when the news often gets us down, Adhar Chandra Bhatt should inspire us to dream big.
