The self-taught coder building a drone empire
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We hear from a founder who taught himself how to code as a child, set up several businesses, and now with his drone delivery firm Manna Air Delivery - one of the largest in Europe - is trying to challenge aviation regulations around the world. Serial entrepreneur Bobby Healy talks about how being from a poor background helped him build a leading company, which is now becoming a major global player, and why, even as a busy CEO, he still loves writing computer code into the early hours.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Sarah Rogers Producers: Niamh McDermott and Jay Behrouzi Sound mix: Nathaniel Danter
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, the economic impact of the war in the Middle East, and why bond markets are so powerful.
We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.
(Picture: Bobby Healy next to a drone. Credit: Bobby Healy)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Sarah Rogers, and this is Meet the founders from Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:15.1 | This is where we speak to innovators around the world about the ideas, risks and realities behind starting a business. Today, a serial |
| 0:24.6 | entrepreneur who's tackling one of the most strictly regulated industries in the world. |
| 0:29.4 | Aviation laws and regulations move very, very slowly. And that's where the risk was. |
| 0:35.0 | There was always a huge likelihood that we would build something great |
| 0:38.7 | that would never be allowed to fly. |
| 0:40.4 | My guest is a self-taught coder who wants to build one of the world's largest drone delivery companies. |
| 0:46.7 | I genuinely wasn't sure if a 49-year-old has any right to be building a startup. |
| 0:56.3 | Do I have the energy to do something like this? |
| 0:59.6 | Maybe I'm too old. I shouldn't be doing this. I should just be taking it easy. |
| 1:03.1 | That's Bobby Healy, the founder of Manor Air Delivery. |
| 1:11.7 | Hello, welcome to meet the founders. Thanks so much for joining me today, Bobby. |
| 1:19.6 | Pleasure to be here. So founding a drone delivery food business, very much a notion of sci-fi when we were just kids. I mean, the tech didn't even really exist. I can't imagine |
| 1:24.2 | you were sitting around dreaming of doing that. What were you like when you were younger? |
| 1:28.5 | I'm one of six children and I'm the one in the middle, eldest sister, five boys. |
| 1:34.0 | But I was the only one that was the kind of mad scientist in the family. |
| 1:37.7 | I was the kid that opened the toaster to see how it worked. |
| 1:40.7 | I was the one that was putting the thermometer in the boiling kettle to just |
| 1:44.8 | verify that water boiled at 100 degrees Celsius. You know, I was inquisitive and I was up in the attic |
| 1:50.4 | with my chemistry set, with my electrical set, with all this equipment, you know, doing experiments. |
| 1:55.5 | And I was like that from a kid. I remember in third class, I would have been 10 years old. |
... |
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