After Eight Years Of Building Quietly, Can Raphe mPhibr Conquer The Skies With Its Long-Endurance UAVs?

For nearly eight years, Raphe mPhibr stayed out of the spotlight.

While Indian startups chased rapid growth, unicorn status and successive funding rounds, the Noida-based company was focused on building drones for India’s armed forces, developing its own manufacturing capabilities and hiring engineers who could solve problems in aerodynamics, flight controls, electronics and materials science.

The startup rarely spoke about its work. Even as its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) began reaching the Indian defence forces, Raphe remained largely unknown outside the defence and aerospace ecosystem.

Things changed in June 2025, when Raphe raised $100 Mn in a funding round led by General Catalyst, taking its total capital raised to $145 Mn. The round valued the company at nearly $900 Mn, putting the spotlight on a startup that had spent most of its existence building quietly.

But for cofounders Vivek and Vikash Mishra, the funding round was only one milestone in a journey that had started years before venture capital entered the picture.

The brothers never set out to become entrepreneurs. They were researchers pursuing doctoral studies in the US, working in the fields of robotics, aerospace engineering, control systems and advanced materials. 

The genesis of Raphe mPhibr is a story of a drone that the Mishra brothers built during their university break. 

“We posted our entire drone-making journey on the internet and somehow caught the attention of government agencies in India,” the founders said. 

The project brought the brothers back home, led to the incorporation of Raphe mPhibr in 2017 and set them on a path to building unmanned systems for the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. 

Today, Raphe designs and manufactures UAVs for surveillance, logistics and other defence applications. Its portfolio includes lightweight surveillance drones, high-altitude logistics platforms, maritime systems and drone-swarm technology. It is also working on larger, long-endurance aircraft capable of staying airborne for more than 26 hours and travelling more than 2,000 Km.

The company’s drones were also deployed during Operation Sindoor in May 2025, bringing its technology into the spotlight at a time when unmanned systems were playing an increasingly important role in military operations.

Its rise comes as India seeks to reduce its dependence on imported defence equipment and build more of its military technology domestically. But for Raphe, that opportunity was not the starting point.

“We always loved technology,” Vivek told Inc42. “We wanted to keep working towards designing and developing new technology. That’s what drove the formation of the company.”

Raphe mPhibr: An Unplanned Leap Into Drones 

The story of Raphe mPhibr begins far from boardrooms or venture capital firms. Vivek and Vikash grew up in a modest household. Their father worked as a truck driver at Northern Calfield Limited in India, and starting a company was never part of the family’s plans. The brothers instead pursued academics. 

Vivek specialised in robotics, electrical engineering, control systems and software, while Vikash focused on aerospace engineering, mechanical systems and advanced materials. Their technical backgrounds naturally complemented each other. While Vivek worked on flight control algorithms and embedded software, Vikash handled aircraft structures, materials and aerodynamics. 

Both were pursuing PhDs in the US when an experiment during a university break changed the course of their careers. Travelling back to India during every break was expensive, so the brothers often stayed on campus. They began spending their free time in university laboratories, where they had access to equipment and facilities.

One winter break, they assembled an octocopter using readily available components. There was no business plan behind it. They simply wanted to see whether they could build a working UAV. 

At the time, Vivek was already involved in research related to micro aerial vehicles, making drones a natural area to explore. Once the prototype flew successfully, Vikash shared videos of their journey with his mentors in India. Their videos reached government agencies looking for indigenous drone technology, changing everything for the brothers. 

“There was never a pre-decided idea that we should form a company. One thing led to another. For us to get the funding for research, we had to form a company,” Vivek said.

From there, the founders spent the next few years doing something uncommon in India’s startup ecosystem. Instead of racing to launch products or raise venture capital, they focused almost entirely on research. 

Building Technology Before Business

Raphe’s early years looked very different from the typical startup playbook. There was little emphasis on rapid customer acquisition. Instead, the founders spent years figuring out what it would take to build aircraft that could operate reliably in some of the most difficult environments encountered by India’s armed forces. 

The company received research support from organisations including the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser. That support gave the founders room to focus on research and engineering before they had to build a large commercial operation. 

“A drone is just a word. If you think about it, it’s an aerial platform. It has everything an aircraft has. To make a good system, the technology behind it has to be good,” Vivek said. 

That philosophy also shaped Raphe’s hiring strategy.

India’s drone industry was still young, so finding engineers with direct experience in building aerospace systems was difficult. Rather than compete for a small pool of experienced talent, Raphe began hiring fresh engineering graduates and training them internally.

Even today, the founders remain involved in that process.

“We teach engineers mathematics and physics. My brother and I still take classes. That’s what it takes to build these systems.”

Several employees who joined during the company’s early years have since moved into senior roles. Raphe’s chief operating officer, for instance, was among its earliest employees.

The founders applied the same philosophy to manufacturing. 

Instead of simply importing components and assembling them into finished drones, Raphe gradually built capabilities across areas such as materials, electronics, software and manufacturing. This became particularly important once the startup started working with the armed forces. 

The startup supplied its first drone to a government agency in 2018. As requirements from the armed forces grew, so did Raphe’s product portfolio.

The startup’s first platform, Bharat, arrived in 2017 as a lightweight, man-portable surveillance drone designed for operations in difficult terrain. Three years later came the mR10, which the startup describes as the world’s first operational drone swarm, followed by the mR20 logistics platform in 2021 to supply troops stranded in remote high-altitude areas. The same year, the startup also introduced the mR10-IC, a surveillance UAV powered by an indigenous internal combustion engine. 

“We were alien to terms such as product-market fit,” Vivek chuckled, adding that “it was the user who told us what they wanted. If the user is asking for something and you’re building it, that’s your PMF.” 

For Raphe, conversations with soldiers and field units became the starting point for product development. Raphe’s teams travelled to border regions, observed operational challenges firsthand and translated those requirements into engineering problems. This has resulted in Raphe’s unusually diverse product portfolio. Its UAV today covers surveillance, logistics and combat roles instead of concentrating on a single application. 

Vikek said that Raphe is the first Indian startup to supply more than 300 logistics drones to the Indian Army for operations in these conditions, giving soldiers another way to move supplies across difficult terrain. 

As demand increased, the startup scaled. Currently, the startup has an employee count of 1,000 ,a manufacturing campus spread across nearly 7 Lakh sq ft and multiple aircraft platforms serving different operational requirements. 

Building A Defence Startup Without Chasing Startup Metrics

Raphe’s transition from a research-led company to a manufacturing business happened gradually. In its early years, the startup worked on specialised projects for government agencies. 

The turning point came when it secured a larger order from the Indian Army around 2021. These contracts demanded higher production volumes and forced the startup to think beyond research laboratories. The ramp-up in defence orders was reflected in Raphe’s financials. Its operating revenue more than tripled YoY to ₹260 Cr in FY25. It posted a profit of ₹6.5 Cr.  

The larger orders also changed its funding needs. Government-backed research support had helped fund Raphe’s early development. Scaling production, however, required private capital.

“The larger orders meant we had to expand,” Vivek said. “That’s when we raised money from private investors.” Raphe raised multiple rounds before closing its $100 Mn funding in 2025. The capital is being used to expand research, manufacturing capacity and product development as the startup prepares for larger unmanned aircraft programmes. 

For many startups, crossing the billion-dollar mark is a milestone worth celebrating. For Vivek, it was largely irrelevant. 

“What matters is that we raise the money we need without diluting ourselves so much that we lose the ability to continue doing what we want to do,” he said. 

Raphe’s next challenge is considerably larger. The company is moving beyond relatively small UAVs towards aircraft that can stay airborne for more than 26 hours and travel more than 2,000 km.

These programmes would put Raphe in the medium-altitude long-endurance and potentially high-altitude long-endurance categories of unmanned aircraft. Such platforms are considerably more complex than the smaller surveillance and logistics drones the company has built so far. The move will require Raphe to scale both engineering and manufacturing.

The company has already experienced what happens when demand grows faster than production capacity. Vivek has acknowledged that some early deliveries were delayed as Raphe raised capital, procured machinery and commissioned new production lines. 

For the founders, however, quality could not be compromised simply to meet a deadline.

“We are very ethical engineers,” Vivek said. “We would either give an amazing product or we won’t give it. The delay happened because we wanted to maintain the quality.”

For nearly eight years, Raphe mPhibr built without much of the noise. Its journey is driven less by valuations and more by engineering, field requirements and the belief that complex defence technology could be designed and manufactured in India.

The next phase could be its biggest test yet. As Raphe moves towards larger, longer-endurance unmanned aircraft, it will have to prove that the capabilities it built for smaller platforms can scale to far more complex systems.

For the Mishra brothers, however, the ambition remains unchanged: build technology that works, solve problems that matter and keep pushing the boundaries of what Indian engineering can achieve.

Edited By Shishir Parasher
Creatives: Varshita Srivastava

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