New Delhi: Airbound will use the seed funds to deploy its R&D efforts and venture into medical deliveries, specifically routine deliveries such as transporting blood samples from health centres to testing labs, founder Naman Pushp, The startup plans to go live with its product in early 2025. Airbound drone technology startup has raised a $1.7 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners Gradcapital, and some angel investors also participated in the round. Founded in 2020, the startup has created a drone, called TRT, that can travel long distances and carry up to 1.5kg of payload.
It uses existing infrastructure like terraces and does not require additional infrastructure like warehouses and drone airports. The startup aims to transform logistics with its proprietary technology and cut delivery costs by a factor of two. Airbound will use the seed funds to deploy its R&D efforts and venture into medical deliveries, specifically routine deliveries such as transforming blood samples from health centres to testing labs founder Naman Pushp. One big challenge is that drone delivery is still really expensive, and there are still a lot of structural inefficiencies in drones.
So, if we can strategically address these inefficiencies, we can create a world where you can have deliveries be almost a hundred times cheaper than they are today, Pushp said. He also said quick commerce is one of the sectors where drones are present a lot of opportunities, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. They want drone delivery are to be cheap so that people can afford this delivery.
Drone regulations in India have been challenging for startups operating in this space, drone regulations in 2021 were amended in 2022 to govern the use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, for instance, all the drones will be given a Unique Identification Number, and all the drone are should be in logistics line of sight and controlled by pilot all the times when the delivery is been start.
Pushp said theirs is no regulations around drone delivery, and there is no proper framework around this, but after the 2021 rules drones have become incredibly liberalized in India, It is actually hard to find a country with a drone liberal policy than India, he said.
