The company targets commercial scale across India, aiming to make aerial logistics cheaper than road transport while laying the foundation for modern aviation.
Indian aerospace startup Airbound has raised $37 million (£28.3 million) in a Series A funding round led by Greenoaks. The investment will support the company as it scales its autonomous aircraft infrastructure and expands commercial drone delivery services across India.
The round attracted participation from prominent new and existing backers, including DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures. This latest influx brings Airbound’s total raised capital to nearly $50 million since its establishment in 2023, following an $8.65 million seed round completed less than a year ago.
The new capital is earmarked for engineering, commercial-scale manufacturing, and go-to-market strategies. However, founder and chief executive Naman Pushp insists the broader objective extends well beyond deploying delivery drones. He views Airbound’s small-scale innovations as a scalable blueprint for heavy-payload aviation.
“We haven’t just built incredibly cost-effective delivery drones; we’ve built a template for better aircraft,” Pushp told Fortune India. “We have found a pathway to repeatedly drive down the cost of flying. The underlying physics remains identical whether you are engineering a tiny one-metre wingspan craft or a massive airliner.”
Airbound’s flagship aircraft, the DRT, is designed around a blended-wing-body tailsitter configuration. Capable of vertical take-off and landing before transitioning into horizontal flight, the craft weighs roughly 2.5 kg, carries a 1 kg payload (with 5 kg payload iteration under development), and boasts an operational range of approximately 40 km. “The DRT was built to compete with motor scooters,” Pushp explained.
To date, Airbound has prioritized high-priority logistics. The startup has completed over 1,000 autonomous flights in partnership with Narayana Health, transporting diagnostic samples between medical centers with zero mission failures and slashing delivery times from hours to minutes.
As air traffic regulations adapt, the company plans to target high-volume retail sectors. “We are particularly interested in markets that offer massive scale within small neighbourhood radii,” Pushp noted. “E-commerce logistics represents a major volume opportunity for us.”
Beyond its initial operations in India, Airbound is evaluating international expansion in response to inbound interest from global partners.
Alongside its Series A funding, Airbound announced a commercial deployment agreement with the state government of Andhra Pradesh. The initial phase will link three cities via a dedicated aerial logistics corridor, with plans to scale the network to 10,000 daily flights spanning healthcare, e-commerce, and general retail.
Despite the funding milestone, Pushp highlighted ongoing structural challenges facing the sector. He argued that existing aviation certification standards remain tailored to traditional, fully finalized aircraft, creating friction for agile hardware startups.
Supply chain bottlenecks present another barrier. While Airbound is transitioning to high-grade materials like carbon-fibre composites, trade and export restrictions frequently complicate raw material sourcing for Indian manufacturers.
