India's Airbound bags $8.65M to build rocket-like drones for one-cent deliveries

Drone Airbound

Airbound, una startup india de drones, ha recaudado $8.65 millones en financiamiento semilla liderado por Lachy Groom, cofundador de Physical Intelligence, mientras comienza un programa piloto de entrega de drones con un hospital privado y trabaja hacia entregas de un centavo utilizando su aeronave ultra ligera de cuerpo alado.

La ronda semilla incluye la participación de Humba Ventures y Lightspeed Venture Partners, inversores existentes de Airbound, así como líderes senior de Tesla, SpaceX y Anduril.

Fundada en 2020 por Naman Pushp, quien tenía 15 años en ese momento y ahora tiene 20, Airbound ha desarrollado una aeronave utilizando un diseño de cola sentada (donde el drone se sienta verticalmente y despegue erguido como un cohete) y un marco de fibra de carbono, con el objetivo de entregar paquetes a un costo hasta 20 veces menor que los métodos convencionales y significativamente más barato que los sistemas actuales de entrega de drones. La aeronave utiliza una forma de cuerpo alado con dos hélices, en lugar de la configuración más común de quadcopter. Esto permite que la aeronave despegue como un cohete y vuele como un avión.

Airbound se centra en entregas de un centavo repensando cómo se utiliza la energía para mover bienes, dijo el fundador y CEO Pushp en una entrevista.

Typically, electric two-wheelers are used in India to deliver payloads weighing under 3 kilograms, Pushp told TechCrunch, even though the vehicles themselves weigh around 150 kilograms (331 pounds) and cost about ₹2 (about $0.02) per kilometer in energy. Airbound aims to cut that cost down to as low as 10 paise (around $0.001) by using its drone, called the TRT, which is built specifically for small payloads and removes the need for a human driver — reducing total transport weight by roughly 30 times. That, Pushp said, translates into a 20-fold drop in energy cost per kilometer, making one-cent drone delivery a feasible end state.

“There is actually an incredible amount of gaps between where drones are today and where they can be,” the founder said. “You need four kilograms of drone to lift one kilogram of payload, which is insane to me. Range is a broken metric. There’s no concept of aerodynamic efficiency with drones ”[right now].”

The aircraft’s rocket-like, blended-wing design eliminates the need for additional propellers and heavy moving parts, improving aerodynamic efficiency over conventional quadcopters. By avoiding propellers that disrupt airflow over the wing, the drone maintains a higher lift-to-drag ratio, reducing the amount of thrust needed to stay aloft and making forward flight significantly more energy-efficient, the founder told TechCrunch.

The first version of Airbound’s drone weighs 3.3 pounds and carries a payload of up to 2.2 pounds, and the startup also aims for its second version to support a 6.6-pound payload while weighing just 2.6 pounds itself.

A prototype of the second version is expected to be ready and flying by mid-next year, with production targeted for the first quarter of 2027, Pushp said.

“When you get into the world of autonomy, logistics is just a physics problem. It’s a game of efficiency and weight. And so if you have a lower weight than anyone else and a higher efficiency than others, you win,” Pushp said.

He began working on Airbound during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, inspired by a video of Zipline, the on-demand drone delivery company. He submitted an early prototype — made from 2D slices held together with toothpicks and tape, then sanded to resemble a fiberglass body — to a hackathon, where it earned a $500 grant. That experience prompted him to apply to Y Combinator, though he was not accepted. Instead, he received a $1,000 grant from the 1517 Fund in 2021, followed by a $25,000 check from Brand Capital and a $12,000 grant from Emergent Ventures.

At 17, Pushp received a term sheet from Lightspeed, but waited until after his 18th birthday to sign it. “That was the first legally binding document that I signed,” he recalled.

The aircraft packs lithium-ion batteries — instead of a commonly used lithium-polymer battery pack. Lithium ion batteries typically have a cycle life of 500 to 800 cycles, whereas lithium polymer lasts for around 100–200 cycles, Pushp said.

“The biggest cost of operating these drones ends up being their battery replacement costs,” he said.

The drone costs Airbound $2,000 to make and ₹24 (around $0.27) per delivery. The startup aims to cut the delivery cost to below ₹5 (roughly $0.05) by the end of 2026. It also projects reaching a million deliveries per day by the middle of 2027, and to achieve that, it plans to increase its manufacturing capacity to over 100 drones a day. This is up from the startup’s current one-drone-per-day production rate at its Bengaluru facility.

Airbound has started its first pilot program with Bengaluru’s Narayana Health through which it will deliver medical logistics for three months, aiming to complete ten deliveries a day of medical tests, blood samples, and other critical supplies.

However, Airbound also targets other sectors including quick commerce, food deliveries, and “a few other smaller areas of last-mile” delivery, the founder told TechCrunch.

Airbound also plans to go beyond India after scaling to one million deliveries per day and enter the U.S. in three years. Meanwhile, the startup is also in talks with regulators including India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation to start its flights soon.

To date, Airbound has raised over $10 million in total funding, and it has a team of 50 people.

The latest round will help scale its manufacturing capabilities and expand operations. The pilot program will also help improve its service and reduce costs to better prepare for broader market adoption in 2026, the startup said.