About Pharos
A lighthouse never sleeps. Neither do we.
Pharos brings the latest aviation technology and AI to a security industry that has waited a long time for it. A watch in the air above South African farms, reserves, estates and industrial sites, flown by licensed pilots around the clock, built to stop crime before it starts.
Our mission
To keep the light on over the places that matter most, so no property worth protecting is unwatched after dark.
Our approach
Prevention, not force.
Security in South Africa still runs mostly on the same tools it did decades ago: walls, guards, beams and cameras that record what already happened. The industry has been overdue for real technology. Pharos brings it: docked aircraft that launch on their own, thermal that sees in total darkness, detection that runs on the aircraft itself, and a licensed pilot making every call.
But the goal is not a better way to chase people. It is fewer incidents in the first place. Crime looks for the site nobody is watching. We make sure yours is not that site.
A watch that is visibly there. Patrols fly on a pattern nobody can learn from outside the fence, so there is never a safe hour to try.
AI and thermal pick out people and vehicles before they reach what they came for. A problem seen at the fence line is a problem stopped at the fence line.
The aircraft carries cameras, not force. The pilot confirms what is there and guides your response to the exact spot, with evidence that holds up afterwards.
Why we exist
Knowing is not stopping.
South African sites are big, remote and hard to watch. Beams, cameras and alarms tell you something happened. They cannot tell you what, or where it went next, and by the time anyone drives out the loss has already happened.
We built Pharos so the watch is already there. A station lives on your ground, the aircraft is overhead in under two minutes, and a licensed pilot tells your response exactly where to go. By day, the same station inspects, measures and maps, so one service covers both.
Our vision is a South Africa where every site worth protecting can be seen from the air, and help always arrives at a confirmed position instead of a guess.
What we believe
Six things we will not trade away.
Software finds things. A licensed pilot decides what they are and who gets called. Every flight has a pilot, and every pilot has a name in the log.
Every clip and flight log is sealed the moment it is captured, with a chain of custody behind it. What we saw is what we can prove.
We watch perimeters, not people's lives. Footage goes only to the people you name and is handled under POPIA.
A licensed pilot in our operations room every hour of every day. The station keeps running when the grid goes down.
Founded in Cape Town and built for South African ground: big properties, long distances, load shedding and rural response times.
You do not buy a drone or learn to fly one. We put the station on your ground, fly it, maintain it and answer for it.
The name
Named for the first lighthouse.
Pharos is named for the lighthouse of Alexandria, the first structure built purely to keep watch through the night. It stood for centuries so that ships could find their way home in the dark.
We were founded in Cape Town in the shadow of Umlindi Wemingizimu, the Watcher of the South. A watcher on the ground, a light in the dark: that is what we set out to build for the places our clients care about.
Founder
Dimitri Vaindirlis
FOUNDER · CEO · CHIEF PILOT
Pharos was founded by Dimitri Vaindirlis, a licensed remote pilot since 2017, with nine years flying commercially in South African conditions and over 1 000 hours logged.
He started Pharos to put that experience where it counts: over the ground people cannot watch themselves, at the hours when it matters most.
How we work
The promise, in numbers.
Airborne on any trigger you choose
Overhead, with thermal, anywhere the station reaches
A licensed pilot in our operations room
Security by night and inspection by day, from one station
Work with us
Put a watch on your ground.
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