Airbound secures $37 million to scale drone logistics against road trucks

Airbound, a three-year-old Indian startup, announced a $37 million Series A round that lifts its cumulative funding to almost $50 million. Led by Greenoaks and joined by DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures, the capital will fund the next generation of its vertical-flight, tail-sitter drones. The upcoming model is expected to double in weight to roughly 6.6 pounds while boosting payload capacity to 11 pounds, preserving runway-free operations.

To date the firm has logged over 13,000 autonomous missions across Bengaluru and Guntur, notably delivering diagnostic samples for Narayana Health in about seven minutes. An agreement with the Andhra Pradesh government envisions a three-city network targeting up to 10,000 daily flights for retail, e-commerce and healthcare, though no subsidies are involved. While production capacity remains undisclosed, Pushp cites regulatory approval for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights as the primary scaling hurdle.