Airbound raises $37M Series A to build drones lighter than their cargo

Funding and Backers

Airbound, an aerospace startup based in Bengaluru, has raised a $37 million Series A round led by Greenoak. DoorDash, Lightspeed, Lachy Groom and Humba Ventures also joined. The DoorDash Labs investment is the delivery company's first in a drone maker, but Airbound says it does not mean a U.S. launch is coming soon.

A Lighter Approach to Flight

Founder and CEO Naman Pushp contends that most drones are inefficient, often needing roughly 4 kilograms of aircraft to lift 1 kilogram of cargo. Airbound's current model carries 1 kilogram of payload for every 1.5 kilograms of aircraft, and the next version is meant to weigh less than the cargo it carries. That lower weight cuts energy use per flight, supporting a target of reducing transport costs tenfold so flight can compete with ground delivery.

India as the Proving Ground

Airbound is scaling in India, where crowded cities, intense heat, monsoon rains and price-sensitive customers make logistics especially demanding. It has completed more than 1,000 autonomous flights with Narayana Health, moving diagnostic samples between facilities in seven minutes on a 2.5-mile route that used to take three to five hours by road. Hardware-level weatherproofing and hyperlocal data feed its RUDRA flight planning and ground control software.

Commercial Expansion

With the funding, Airbound announced an agreement with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to build a drone delivery network connecting three cities, aiming for up to 10,000 daily flights across retail, e-commerce and healthcare. Turnaround sites staffed by operators and dispatchers handle battery swaps and payload loading, while RUDRA allows a single operator to manage more than 100 aircraft with real-time deconfliction and fleet visibility. The company's next steps will test whether its weight-first design can deliver on that promise at scale.