Airbound Raises $37M to Make Drone Delivery Cost-Competitive with Trucking
Airbound, an Indian startup specializing in autonomous drones, has secured $37 million in Series A funding as it strives to make air-based goods transport as affordable as road freight.
The round was led by Greenoaks, with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed, and Humba Ventures. This investment follows an $8.65 million seed round from October 2025, bringing the three-year-old startup’s total funding to nearly $50 million.
Redesigning Drones for Efficiency
Airbound and other startups in this emerging sector argue that drones can deliver certain goods faster and more cheaply than road vehicles. While successful deployments exist, drone delivery has yet to match the scale and versatility of trucking. Airbound aims to close this gap by fundamentally redesigning its aircraft.
Conventional aircraft expend significant energy carrying their own weight rather than payload, making flight expensive—especially for small loads. Airbound’s solution is to build vertical-flight drones that weigh less than the cargo they carry, according to founder and CEO Naman Pushp.
The current drone, named TRT, weighs about 3.3 pounds and carries up to 2.2 pounds of payload. The next version, in development, is expected to weigh around 6.6 pounds and carry up to 11 pounds, Pushp told TechCrunch.
The startup employs a rocket-like, tail-sitter design: the drone takes off and lands vertically in an upright position before transitioning to horizontal flight. Airbound plans to retain vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability even as it scales to larger aircraft, avoiding runway dependence.
“We want to build towards a world where everything has cost parity with trucking,” Pushp said.
Proven Deployments and Expansion
Founded in 2023, Airbound has completed over 13,000 autonomous flights across the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Guntur. This includes more than 1,000 flights with Narayana Health, where drones transport diagnostic samples between healthcare facilities.
On the Narayana route, a single active drone flies samples about 2.5 miles in roughly seven minutes. By contrast, truck transport can take three to five hours when factoring in waiting time for enough samples to be bundled, according to Pushp.
The partnership is expanding to Narayana’s new Banashankari hospital in Bengaluru, which was designed without an on-site diagnostic lab or blood bank. Instead, it will rely on Airbound’s drones to connect with centralized facilities.
Three-City Drone Network Ambition
Airbound has set its sights on a much larger goal: creating a drone delivery network connecting three cities in Andhra Pradesh. The startup has signed an agreement with the state government, targeting up to 10,000 flights per day for retail, e-commerce, and healthcare deliveries. With the new funding, Airbound is well-positioned to advance its mission of making drone delivery a practical, cost-effective alternative to trucking.
via TechCrunch