Airbound, the Bengaluru drone-delivery startup building rocket-shaped tail-sitter aircraft, has raised a $37 million Series A led by Greenoaks, with participation from DoorDash, Silicon Valley investor Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures, less than a year after a $8.65 million seed round.
Rocket-like drones aimed at trucking economics
Airbound is designing vertical-takeoff, blended-wing-body aircraft that weigh less than the cargo they carry, an approach chief executive Naman Pushp says is essential to matching the cost of road freight for small parcels. The company’s current TRT drone weighs about 3.3 pounds and hauls 2.2 pounds; a next-generation version in development will weigh 6.6 pounds and lift up to 11 pounds. All variants take off vertically as tail-sitters and cruise on fixed wings, avoiding runway dependence as the aircraft scale.
Andhra Pradesh three-city network
Alongside the raise, Airbound signed a commercial agreement with the government of India’s Andhra Pradesh state to build a drone-delivery network spanning three districts, eventually running up to 10,000 flights per day for retail, e-commerce and healthcare. Pushp said the network will require between 250 and 1,000 aircraft depending on route length, and that the state is helping shape the beyond-visual-line-of-sight regulatory framework needed to make it work. The startup has already logged more than 13,000 autonomous flights, including 1,000-plus diagnostic-sample runs for the Narayana Health hospital network.
Building the ‘Boeing’ of drone logistics
Pushp positions Airbound as an aircraft maker for drone logistics operators rather than a delivery operator in its own right, styling the company as “the Boeing role — the aircraft airlines everywhere rely on, not the airline itself.” The startup manufactures out of a 43,000-square-foot Bengaluru plant and now employs more than 150 staff, though it remains pre-revenue while it waits for large-scale BVLOS clearances. Its Series A lands in a busy month for delivery-drone capital, alongside Amazon’s Prime Air 500-city expansion and Guident’s WatchBot renewal.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch, DroneLife and Business Standard.