Airbound raises $37M from Greenoaks and DoorDash to make cargo drones compete with trucks

What happened

Airbound, a three-year-old Indian startup building autonomous cargo drones, has raised $37 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks, with DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures also participating, according to TechCrunch. The round landed less than a year after an $8.65 million seed round, bringing the company's total funding to nearly $50 million. The goal behind the money is blunt: make flying goods from point to point cost the same as hauling them by road.

Redesigning the aircraft

Drone delivery startups broadly argue that aircraft can beat road vehicles on speed and cost for certain cargo, but deployments so far remain small next to trucking. Airbound's approach is to attack the economics of the aircraft itself.

As founder and CEO Naman Pushp explained to TechCrunch, conventional aircraft burn much of their energy lifting their own structure rather than the cargo, which makes flight expensive for light loads. Airbound designs its drones so the aircraft weighs less than what it carries. Its current model, the TRT, weighs roughly 3.3 pounds and lifts a payload of around 2.2 pounds. The next generation, still in development, is expected to weigh about 6.6 pounds while carrying up to 11 pounds.

The drones use a tail-sitter configuration reminiscent of a rocket: they stand upright for vertical takeoff and landing, then pitch over into efficient horizontal cruise. Pushp said the company intends to keep vertical takeoff and landing even as it scales to larger aircraft, so the fleet never depends on runways.

Cargo drones already flying for hospitals

The startup has logged more than 13,000 autonomous flights across the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Guntur, according to TechCrunch. That figure includes over 1,000 flights for hospital network Narayana Health, moving diagnostic samples between facilities.

The Narayana route currently uses a single active drone covering about 2.5 miles in roughly seven minutes. Pushp said the same samples can take three to five hours by two-wheeler once waiting time for bundling enough samples for road transport is factored in. The partnership is now expanding to Narayana's new Banashankari hospital in Bengaluru, which was built without its own diagnostic lab or blood bank and will instead depend on Airbound drones linking it to centralised facilities.

A three-city network in Andhra Pradesh

The bigger ambition is a drone delivery network connecting three cities in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Airbound has signed an agreement with the state government targeting 10,000 flights per day for retail, e-commerce and healthcare deliveries. Pushp estimates that would need between 250 and 1,000 aircraft depending on route lengths, though he expects the figure to sit closer to 250.

Notably, the deal involves no government contract or subsidy. Pushp said the Andhra Pradesh government is instead helping build the regulatory framework the network needs, with Airbound expecting to earn revenue from businesses using it for deliveries.

The Boeing role, not the airline

Airbound is not alone in India: Skye Air Mobility and TSAW Drones are building aerial logistics businesses, and Garuda Aerospace has also explored delivery. But Pushp positions his company differently — as the aircraft maker that other logistics operators will eventually fly, rather than the largest delivery operator itself. He likened it to the role Boeing plays for airlines.

The company designs and manufactures its aircraft in-house at a 43,000-square-foot facility in Bengaluru, keeping airframe and core systems work internal. Pushp declined to disclose production capacity or units built, but said manufacturing will not be the constraint as it scales. Regulation is the real bottleneck, particularly approvals for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, the certification that lets drones fly past an operator's direct view and that any delivery network at scale requires.

Those constraints have so far kept Airbound broadly pre-revenue, despite a headcount above 150. Pushp is unbothered by that timeline, telling TechCrunch the aim is to become a giant over decades rather than chase revenue early.

Why it matters

Airbound's bet is that delivery economics change when the drone costs less to fly than the cargo is worth moving — and its hospital deployments in India are an early, measurable proof point, cutting sample transport from hours to minutes. The $37 million from investors including DoorDash signals that food and logistics players see a credible path beyond small pilot projects. But the Andhra Pradesh plan, with a target of 10,000 daily flights, will stand or fall on BVLOS regulation rather than engineering. If certification arrives, Airbound could help define the aircraft layer of drone logistics; if it stalls, the funding buys patience but not revenue.