India's Airbound raises $37M Series A to build rocket-style drones that rival trucking costs

Airbound, an Indian autonomous drone startup founded in 2023, has raised $37 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks, with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures, less than a year after an $8.65 million seed round, bringing total funding to nearly $50 million. The three-year-old company employs more than 150 people from a 43,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, and builds tail-sitter drones designed to weigh less than the cargo they carry; its current TRT model weighs about 3.3 pounds and carries roughly 2.2 pounds of payload, while a next-generation version in development is expected to weigh about 6.6 pounds and carry up to 11 pounds.

The startup has completed more than 13,000 autonomous flights across Bengaluru and Guntur, including more than 1,000 flights for hospital network Narayana Health, transporting diagnostic samples about 2.5 miles in roughly seven minutes versus three to five hours by truck, a partnership set to expand to Narayana's new Banashankari hospital, which was built without an on-site diagnostic lab or blood bank. Airbound has also signed an agreement with the Andhra Pradesh government to build a drone delivery network linking three cities, targeting up to 10,000 flights per day for retail, e-commerce, and healthcare, which would require between 250 and 1,000 aircraft; the agreement involves no government contract or subsidy, with the state instead assisting on regulatory matters.

CEO and founder Naman Pushp said regulatory approvals, particularly for beyond visual line of sight operations, remain the main obstacle to scaling, and the company is currently pre-revenue despite its operational flights. Pushp said Airbound's long-term goal is to become an aircraft manufacturer supplying other logistics networks rather than operating deliveries itself.