Airbound Raises $37 Mn to Scale Autonomous Aircraft in India

Bengaluru-based aerospace company Airbound has raised $37 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks. The company has also signed a commercial deployment agreement with the Andhra Pradesh government. 

The funding will support engineering, manufacturing and market expansion, while the agreement will establish an autonomous drone delivery network across three cities.

Airbound will use the funding to scale commercial manufacturing and accelerate its go-to-market efforts. The round includes new and existing investors such as DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures. The company has raised nearly $50 million since its 2023 launch.

The drone delivery network connecting three cities will support retail, e-commerce and healthcare deliveries. The company plans to scale the network to 10,000 daily flights. It also expects the programme to provide a model for aerial delivery expansion across India.

Airbound has already completed more than 1,000 autonomous flights with Narayana Health. It transported diagnostic samples between healthcare facilities. The company said the flights reduced delivery times from hours to minutes.

Airbound designs and manufactures its aircraft in India. Its aircraft use autonomy, materials science and a physics-first approach. The company says the design aims to make the aircraft weigh less than the cargo it carries.

The company says this approach could reduce the cost of moving goods by air. Founder and CEO Naman Pushp said the company wants to make flying cheaper than road transport. He said the goal is to move people and goods “for a fraction of a cent”.

The startup also says the same aircraft technology could eventually support freight and passenger transport. The company claims its aircraft could turn a 300-kilometre journey into a 20-minute flight.

Greenoaks Partner Neil Shah said Airbound could challenge the cost gap between road and air freight. “Trucks are cheap and slow, planes are fast and expensive,” Shah said. He added that Airbound aims to remove that trade-off.

For now, the company is focusing on commercial deliveries in India. Pushp said the country’s delivery expectations create a demanding test for the technology. “If you can build something that works in India, it tends to work anywhere,” he said.