It's a good question. So Ondas is a Portuguese word and it means waves. And so we had one of the executives from our past, it was a founder of Ondas Networks that worked in North and South America, the telecom world, so he sort of came up with it. That's what it is, waves. Radio waves was the idea. Now, if you're a Portuguese speaker, one of the things they'll say is 'Que ondas?' And what that means is how's your vibe? So it's kind of become a slang. It's like how you would say how are you, what's up, right? It's sort of double entendre there. So Ondas, and of course now it stands for a lot more given the business we're putting together, but that was the inspiration.
Yeah, and I know Ondas has a lot going on, but for the folks in the know or barely in the know, it's all about drones. And so how did drones come about? I mean, you could have invested in anything and you went heavy in the drones.
Yeah, so maybe we'll talk about the journey, right? Because this has been an evolution. You know, for me personally, I started up back eight years ago with Ondas, and at the time it was a wireless connectivity platform, a business called Ondas Networks. So that's kind of evolved to where we are as Ondas today, in these defense and security tools around autonomy, around unmanned systems, now in the air and the ground. But you know, as you said, the drones, it really did start from an industrial standpoint. We were doing the hard work with Ondas Networks to drive maturation first, but then adoption of our connectivity platform with critical markets like railroads, utilities, oil and gas field operators. And you know, as most of our investors know, the railroads were the first ones to hit and we've been making substantial efforts to penetrate and serve that market. But as we're doing that, I was trying to think, okay, if we're bringing a network upgrade to a critical market like railroads, how do we engage technologies at the edge of field operations that can connect to the network? Because we're going to bring a wide data pipe, how do I fill it up with data? Right, and the idea is if we could fill it up with data, the customer will build networks faster and wider and deeper, so it will help our business. And we had a lot of experience introducing industrial technologies into these markets, so we understand cycles, how to do that, how to work with customers and complex technologies and operational issues.
So that led us to, I was watching in those markets, I was seeing that the railroads as well as oil and gas field operators, utilities were really doing a lot of work, and I'm going back six or seven years now, to adopt the drone because it is a valuable tool, right? It's the most valuable data gathering or intelligence gathering device at the edge of field operations. And it's for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the security, the video feed and that intelligence can give you. But it's also the inspection of industrial assets and actionable intelligence so you can keep your operations safe, secure, and efficient. So that was the scope, and of course the drone needs a wireless network. And in fact, the drone has two aspects. There's command control and there's also the payload. How do you get the data, the imagery you're collecting back to the customer for their operating center so it can be useful? So I thought we had a right to play, and that led us into American Robotics, which at the time really focused on industrial markets. And I'll fast forward. Of course, as we were engaged there with American Robotics and introducing industrial tools, along with trying to see if we can connect the network, that led us into the military and homeland security and public safety worlds as well. So it's been a journey, and along the way the technology is maturing, the end markets and the customer trajectory. And so today what looks like a company that's kind of breaking out, we are. That's been after many, many years of hard work.
