Airbound Bags $37 Mn From Greenoaks, DoorDash To Scale Drone Manufacturing

Dronetech startup Airbound has raised $37 Mn (about ₹355 Cr) in a Series A funding round led by US-based investment firm Greenoaks.

The round also saw participation from new and existing investors, including food delivery major DoorDash, Physical Intelligence cofounder Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures.

Airbound plans to use the fresh proceeds to accelerate engineering, commercial-scale manufacturing, and go-to-market initiatives.

The latest fundraise takes the startup’s total funding since its launch in 2023 to nearly $50 Mn, it said in a statement.

This includes the $8.65 Mn funding round it raised in October 2025 from Groom, Humba Ventures, Lightspeed, and senior executives from Tesla, Anduril, and Ather Energy.

Founded by Naman Pushp, Airbound designs and manufactures autonomous drones for transporting goods. Its aircraft use a blended-wing-body tail-sitter configuration, allowing them to take off and land vertically before transitioning to horizontal flight.

The Bengaluru-based startup’s flagship TRT drone weighs about 2.5 kg, can carry a payload of around 1 kg, and has a range of approximately 40 km. The startup claims the drone is built using carbon-fibre composites and requires substantially lower thrust than conventional quadcopters. 

Airbound also operates a proprietary flight control system, RUDRA, which it says enables a single operator to manage more than 100 drones.

As Inc42 reported earlier, Airbound was manufacturing about one drone a day in October 2025. At the time, each delivery cost the startup around ₹24, which it planned to bring below ₹5 by scaling production.

The Series A funding will now be crucial for testing whether Airbound can achieve those cost reductions while moving from limited healthcare deployments to a commercially viable, high-frequency delivery network.

While Airbound now describes itself as an aerospace startup, its immediate commercial focus remains autonomous drone deliveries across healthcare, ecommerce, and retail.

The broader positioning reflects its longer-term ambition to develop larger aircraft capable of transporting freight and, eventually, passengers. The startup said the same aircraft architecture could ultimately be used to carry a passenger or around 100 kg of cargo.

“We believe in a world where all movement happens in the air. Not some of it. Not most of it. All of it,” Pushp said.

Airbound is currently working with hospital chain Narayana Health to transport diagnostic samples between healthcare facilities. The startup claimed that it has completed more than 1,000 autonomous flights under the partnership without any mission failures, reducing transportation times from hours to minutes.

Alongside the fundraise, Airbound reiterated its plans to develop a drone delivery network connecting three cities in Andhra Pradesh and gradually scale it to 10,000 flights a day. The network will support healthcare, ecommerce, and retail deliveries.

However, the Andhra Pradesh initiative is not a fresh development. Airbound signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh Drone Corporation in June to operate across Amaravati, Vijayawada, and Guntur, with a target of reaching 10,000 daily flights by the end of 2026.

The startup expects the deployment to serve as a template for expanding aerial delivery networks to other parts of the country.

The development comes amid growing adoption of drones for logistics and last-mile deliveries. Startups such as Skye Air Mobility, Redwing Labs, Yali Aerospace, among others,  are developing drone-led delivery solutions across healthcare, ecommerce, and other sectors. 

Investors are also bullish on the segment, as a result of which startups are seeing a lot of interest. For instance, Skye Air Mobility raised $9 Mn earlier this year to expand its last mile drone delivery service. 

Similarly, IIT Kanpur-incubated dronetech startup EndureAir recently bagged ₹30 Cr in grant support under the Centre’s RDIF scheme to develop its SABAL-200 kg heavy-payload drone. The startup develops drones for defence, surveillance, disaster management and logistics use cases. 

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