India’s Airbound bags $37M to take on trucks with rocket-like drones

Airbound, an Indian autonomous drone startup, has successfully raised $37 million in fresh capital as it aims to drive down the cost of aerial goods transport to match road trucking. The Series A round was led by Greenoaks, with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures. This latest influx of cash comes less than a year after the startup secured an $8.65 million seed round, bringing its total funds raised to nearly $50 million.

While drone deliveries have seen successful deployments globally, the sector still struggles to match the scale and versatility of ground freight. Airbound is addressing this challenge by redesigning aircraft architecture to directly challenge road transport. Conventional aircraft often expend significant energy carrying their own structural weight rather than payload, driving up costs for smaller loads. Founder and CEO Naman Pushp noted in an interview that Airbound's solution is building vertical-flight drones designed to weigh less than the cargo they carry.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

The startup's current drone model, named TRT, weighs roughly 3.3 pounds and can carry a 2.2-pound payload. Pushp revealed that their upcoming iteration will weigh about 6.6 pounds while supporting up to 11 pounds of cargo. Airbound utilizes a rocket-like, tail-sitter design that takes off and lands vertically in an upright orientation before shifting into horizontal flight. Pushp emphasized that the company intends to retain vertical takeoff and landing capabilities for larger future aircraft to eliminate dependence on traditional runways.

Since its founding in 2023, Airbound has completed over 13,000 autonomous flights across the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Guntur. This milestone includes more than 1,000 flights partnering with Narayana Health hospital network to transport diagnostic samples between facilities. Operating a single active drone along the Narayana route, the startup moves medical samples across 2.5 miles in about seven minutes—a trip that typically takes three to five hours by truck due to batching delays. This partnership is now scaling to Narayana’s new Banashankari hospital in Bengaluru, which relies entirely on drones to connect with centralized laboratories.