By Salonee Kulkarni
Airbound, a Bengaluru startup, will raise $30 Million in a fresh funding round led by Greenoaks, during which Lightspeed and other existing investors will participate. An interesting shift can be observed towards investment decisions by investors. The current startup ecosystem focuses on robotics, AI and aerospace. Deeptech companies are on the investment radar of Global investors and the Indian government.
Airbound currently focuses on healthcare logistics and plans to expand by 2026. It is planning to draft a blueprint enabling users to choose the mode of delivery by integrating drone delivery to the ONDC platform. The options that the consumer will have include bike, van and drone, with factors like cost and speed taken into consideration.
The seeding funding round occurred in December. In the previous round, Airbound raised $8.65 Million, in the month of October. The investors included Physical Intelligence cofounder Lachy Groom, Humba Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Senior executives from Tesla, Anduril, and Ather Energy.
The startup was recently founded in 2023 by Naman Pushp, who is 20 years old. He began working with drones when he was 15 years old. The model that the drones in Airbound function on ensures agility similar to a rocket launcher and efficiency of long-duration flight by applying the concept of fixed-wing cruising. The aircraft model enables autonomous logistical capacity through the design, which is its unique selling point. The blended-wing-body and the tail-sitter design are unique to Airbound.
The drone is situated on a launchpad and takes off vertically; as it reaches the limits of the sky it can venture into, it takes the atmospheric pressure into account and adjusts itself horizontally; in aviation terms, it would be a forward flight. The material with which the drone is built is carbon fibre. The material is lightweight and consumes energy to run efficiently.
Propellers built in-house are the key manufacturing component, which leads to reduced costs.
The timing of the seed funding round is very crucial. India is moving towards an economy where it plans to widen its policy and push capital into the R&D of deeptech companies. The Secretary from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Abhay Karandikar, in his conversations with Moneycontrol, emphasised that the RDI fund is valued at 1lakh crore, will be invested in Alternative Investment Funds every year at Rs 15,000–20,000 crore. India is adopting a speculative policy and leveraging its position as a country investing in deep tech startups.
Geopolitical tensions are rising across the world. Deep analysis has prompted the government to shift its focus to self-reliance. India, situated in the Continent of Contrasts, aims to invest in research and development in domain areas like aerospace, defence and semiconductors.