Airbound, an aerospace startup based in Bengaluru, India, made waves last month when it announced that it had raised a $37 million Series A funding round led by Greenoak. And that funding round stood out in particular because of its participation from other key partners in the drone delivery space, including DoorDash, Lightspeed, Lachy Groom and Humba Ventures.
I reached out to them to find out more about what makes Airbound different, including the tech behind their uniquely light drone.
“Today it takes roughly 4 kilograms of drone to carry 1 kilogram of cargo, which never made sense to us,” Airbound Founder and CEO Naman Pushp said in an interview with The Drone Girl. “Our aircraft carries a kilogram of payload for every 1.5 kilograms of aircraft, and our next design will weigh less than the cargo it lifts. Less weight in the air means less energy per flight, which is how we reach our goal of cutting transport costs by a factor of 10 and making flight cost-competitive with ground.”
That physics-first approach is what Airbound says caught the eye of DoorDash Labs, marking the global delivery giant’s first-ever investment in a drone company.
Why India — and why it’s a place to scale
Airbound is currently building out its operations in India, where high population density, intense heat, monsoon rains and hyper-sensitive delivery costs set a high bar for logistics.
The company has already logged over 1,000 autonomous flights with Narayana Health, which is one of India’s largest healthcare networks, transporting diagnostic samples between facilities. The route takes diagnostic samples across 2.5 miles in seven minutes. Because of poor road infrastructure and lack of a direct route, the trip previously took 3 to 5 hours by road — and that’s once enough samples were batched for a two-wheeler.
To handle India’s weather, Airbound relies on hardware-layer weatherproofing and hyperlocal data fed into its proprietary flight planning software, RUDRA.
“Weatherproofing the aircraft starts at the hardware layer where we ensure rain and heat can’t affect any critical functionality,” Pushp said. “We have access to hyperlocal weather data from our weather stations in RUDRA, our flight planning and ground control software… Furthermore, our flight control software implements control algorithms to increase resilience towards external disturbances, validated in simulation as well as extensive R&D flight testing.”
Alongside the funding, Airbound announced a commercial agreement with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to build a drone delivery network connecting three cities. The project aims to scale up to 10,000 daily flights across retail, e-commerce and healthcare logistics.
“Our aircraft turnaround sites are built to keep flights moving. Each one is staffed with operators and dispatchers, so we can complete a high number of flights throughout the day,” Pushp said. “Battery swaps, payload loading, and routine checks are all quick and simple… RUDRA ties the whole operation together, letting a single operator manage more than 100 aircraft at once with real-time deconfliction and full fleet visibility.”
What about that DoorDash backing?
DoorDash has been increasingly moving into the drone delivery space, including recent news that DoorDash has its own airline license and is looking to launch drone deliveries within the U.S.
Alas, DoorDash’s backing should not be interpreted as a clear signal of a future U.S. suburban rollout. Airbound’s Pushp said he is taking a deliberate, approach focused on operational maturity over hasty market expansion.
“Right now our focus is proving the aircraft and its economics at real scale in India,” Pushp said. “India is the toughest test we could pick, with dense cities, hard weather, and customers who won’t pay a rupee more than they have to. If we can make the economics work here, we’ll have a foundation strong enough to build on anywhere.”
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