Airbornean Indian drone startup, has raised $8.65 million in seed funding led by Physical Intelligence co-founder Lachy Groom as it begins a drone delivery pilot with a private hospital and works towards one-minute delivery using the ultra-light mixed-body aircraft.
The seed round includes participation from Humba Ventures and existing Airbound investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as senior leaders from Tesla, SpaceX and Anduril.
Founded in 2020 by Naman Pushp — who was 15 at the time and is now 20 — Airbound developed an aircraft with a tail-sitter design (where the drone sits vertically and launches upright like a rocket) and a carbon-fiber frame, with the goal of delivering packages at up to 20 times lower cost than conventional drone systems. The aircraft uses a twin-propeller hybrid wing body shape, rather than the more common quadcopter configuration. This allows the aircraft to take off like a rocket and fly like an airplane.
Airbound aims for one-minute deliveries by rethinking how energy is used to transport goods, Pushp founder and CEO said in an interview.
Typically, electric two-wheelers are used in India to deliver payloads weighing less than 3 kilograms, Pushp told TechCrunch, even though the vehicles themselves weigh about 150 kilograms (331 pounds) and cost about ₹2 (about $0.02) per kilometer in energy. Airbound aims to reduce that cost by up to 10 paise (about $0.001) using its drone, called TRT, which is built specifically for small payloads and removes the need for a human driver – reducing the total transport weight by about 30 times. This, Pushp said, translates into a 20-fold drop in energy costs per kilometer, making one-minute drone delivery a feasible end-state.
“There’s really an incredible gap between where drones are today and where they can be,” said the founder. “You need four kilograms of drone to lift one kilogram of payload, which is crazy to me. Range is a broken measurement. There is no concept of aerodynamic efficiency with drones [right now].”
The aircraft’s rocket-like design with blended wings eliminates the need for additional propellers and heavy moving parts, improving aerodynamic performance 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 required to stay aloft and making forward flight significantly more energy efficient, the founder told TechCrunch.
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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 itself weighing just 2.6 pounds.
A prototype of the second version is expected to be ready and flying by the middle of next year, aiming for production in 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. So if you have a lower weight than anybody else and a higher efficiency than everybody else, you win,” Pushp said.
He started working on Airbound during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, inspired by a video by on-demand drone delivery company Zipline. He submitted an early prototype — made of two-dimensional slices held together with toothpicks and tape, then rubbed to resemble a fiberglass body — to a hackathon, where he won a $500 grant. This experience prompted him to apply to Y Combinator, although he was not accepted. Instead, he received a $1,000 grant from the 1517 Fund in 2021, followed by a $25,000 check from gradCapital and a $12,000 grant from Emergent Ventures.
At 17, Pushp received a term sheet from Lightspeed, but waited until his 18th birthday to sign it. “That was the first legally binding document I signed,” he recalls.
The aircraft packs lithium-ion batteries — instead of the commonly used lithium-polymer batteries. Lithium-ion batteries typically have a life of 500 to 800 cycles, while lithium polymer lasts about 100-200 cycles, Pushp said.
“The biggest cost of running these drones ends up being the cost of replacing their battery,” he said.
The drone costs Airbound $2,000 to build and ₹24 (about $0.27) per delivery. The startup aims to reduce delivery costs below ₹5 (about $0.05) by the end of 2026. It also plans to reach one million deliveries per day by mid-2027, and to achieve this, plans to increase its production capacity to over 100 drones per day. This is higher than the startup’s current production rate of one drone per day at its Bangalore facility.
Airbound has started its first pilot program with Bengaluru’s Narayana Health, through which it will provide medical logistics for three months, aiming to complete 10 deliveries a day of medical tests, blood samples and other critical supplies.
But Airbound is also targeting other sectors, including quick commerce, food deliveries and “some other smaller last-mile delivery areas,” the founder told TechCrunch.
Airbound also plans to expand beyond India after scaling to one million deliveries per day and enter the US 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 has a team of 50 people.
The latest round will help scale its production capabilities and expand its operations. The pilot program will also help improve its services and reduce costs to better prepare for wider market adoption in 2026, the startup said.
