Bengaluru-based aerospace startup Airbound has raised $37 million in a Collection A spherical led by Greenoaks, with participation from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures.
The most recent spherical takes Airbound’s whole funding to nearly $50 million since its launch in 2023. The corporate plans to make use of the recent capital to speed up engineering, commercial-scale manufacturing and go-to-market initiatives.
Based by Naman Pushp, Airbound is growing light-weight autonomous plane designed to move folks and items at a decrease value than standard plane.
The startup claims its plane can carry a single passenger or round 100 kg of cargo whereas considerably decreasing the plane weight required to hold the payload. Its method is geared toward decreasing the economics of air-based transportation and making autonomous aerial supply commercially viable.
“Higher physics results in higher economics, which unlocks the potential to maneuver folks and items for a fraction of a cent. That’s what we’re constructing at Airbound,” stated Naman Pushp, founder and CEO of Airbound.
Airbound has already accomplished greater than 1,000 autonomous flights in partnership with Narayana Well being, transporting diagnostic samples between healthcare services. The corporate stated these deployments have diminished supply instances from hours to minutes.
Alongside the fundraise, Airbound has signed a business deployment settlement with the Andhra Pradesh authorities to construct an autonomous drone supply community connecting three cities.
Underneath the programme, the corporate plans to scale the community to 10,000 every day flights, catering to retail, ecommerce and healthcare deliveries. Airbound stated the Andhra Pradesh deployment will function a mannequin for increasing aerial supply networks throughout India.
Airbound’s long-term plans additionally embrace passenger transportation. The corporate goals to finally use its plane for intercity journey, together with a possible 300 km journey in round 20 minutes.
The startup is betting that advances in plane design, autonomy and supplies science could make air transportation cheaper and broaden using autonomous plane past standard drone supply.
