Airbound Raises $37 Million to Power 10,000 Daily Drone Flights in Andhra Pradesh

Bengaluru-based aerospace startup Airbound has closed a $37 million Series A funding round and signed a state agreement to build a drone delivery network across three cities in Andhra Pradesh. The round, led by growth investor Greenoaks, marks DoorDash’s first direct investment in an Indian startup, alongside Lightspeed, Lachy Groom and Humba Ventures.

The fresh capital pushes Airbound’s total funding to nearly $50 million since it launched in 2023, positioning it as one of India’s most closely watched drone delivery startups heading into 2026.

What the Airbound-Andhra Pradesh Drone Delivery Deal Includes

Under the agreement, Airbound will build infrastructure connecting three Andhra Pradesh cities for retail, e-commerce and healthcare deliveries, targeting 10,000 drone flights a day at scale. Founder and CEO Naman Pushp was clear that this isn’t a government-funded contract.

“The bar for delivery in India is high. The benchmark is 10 minutes to your doorstep, at an extremely low cost. That’s the complexity here. If you can build something that works in India, it tends to work anywhere,” Pushp said.

Instead, the state is helping shape the regulatory framework the drone network needs, while Airbound expects the businesses using its delivery infrastructure to generate the revenue.

The Engineering Bet Behind Airbound’s Autonomous Aircraft

Airbound’s core pitch to investors isn’t logistics — it’s physics. Most small aircraft built to carry roughly 100kg of cargo end up weighing around 400kg once fuel and payload are factored in. Airbound is engineering its autonomous aircraft to flip that ratio, so the payload — not the airframe — makes up most of the weight in flight.

“Better physics leads to better economics, which unlocks the potential to move people and goods for a fraction of a cent. That is what we’re building at Airbound,” Pushp said.

Greenoaks partner Neil Shah framed the bet in blunter terms: “Trucks are cheap and slow, planes are fast and expensive, and nothing has broken the trade-off in more than a century. Airbound does.”

A Track Record Built on Healthcare Deliveries

Before scaling to Andhra Pradesh, Airbound tested its model with hospital network Narayana Health, completing more than 1,000 autonomous flights transporting diagnostic samples between facilities. The company reports zero mission failures across those flights, with some delivery times cut from hours to minutes.

That healthcare pilot is now the proof point behind a much larger ambition. Airbound designs, builds and tests its aircraft in Bengaluru, and the Andhra Pradesh network is meant to serve as a repeatable model for aerial delivery elsewhere in India — and eventually beyond package delivery altogether.

From Drone Delivery to Intercity Passenger Flights

Pushp’s roadmap extends well past parcels. Airbound has said it eventually wants to apply the same low-weight aircraft architecture to freight and, further out, passenger transport — with a stated long-term goal of making a 300km intercity trip possible in roughly 20 minutes. That remains an aspiration rather than a live service, but it signals how Airbound is positioning itself: not as a drone-delivery app, but as an aerospace infrastructure company that started with drones because they were the fastest path to real flight hours.

Why This Funding Round Matters for India’s Drone Delivery Market

DoorDash’s decision to back an Indian aerospace startup — its first India investment of any kind — is notable on its own, hinting at how last-mile logistics players are watching autonomous delivery as a long-term cost lever. Combined with Greenoaks’ conviction and a state government actively building regulatory rails around commercial drone flights, Airbound’s raise reflects growing investor confidence that India’s dense, cost-sensitive delivery market is exactly where autonomous aircraft economics get tested hardest — and, if they work, most convincingly.

The raise also lands amid broader momentum across India’s aerospace and startup-funding landscape, from LAT Aerospace’s acquisition of Sharang Shakti Defence Robotics to fresh early-stage capital such as AUM Ventures’ new fund, signalling that investors are backing Indian deep-tech and hardware bets well beyond software.

For now, the next milestone is straightforward: turning a 1,000-flight hospital pilot into a 10,000-flight-a-day commercial network across Andhra Pradesh.

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Author

Sachin

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages...

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages KnowStartup's Digital Agency rankings of firms across multiple cities in India. You can reach him on Linkedin.

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