India ' s drone start-up company, Airbund, completed $3.7 million in wheel A financing and continued to advance autonomous logistics of drone operations. The company wants to lower the cost of air cargo to near road trucks and expand the distribution network in southern India.
After financing, cumulatively, nearly $50 million.
This round of financing was led by Greenoaks, with DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightseed and Humba Ventures. It's less than a year before Airbound completed $8.65 million seeder financing last year. So, this company, which was only three years old, accumulated almost $50 million.
Airboard believes that, in part, drones can complete transport faster and cheaper than ground vehicles. However, it is still difficult for the industry to compete with truck transport in terms of size and scope of application. The current practice of the company is to redesign the vehicle to close the gap with ground logistics.
Existing aircraft have been used for hospital sample transport
The current UAV model TRT weighs about 3.3 pounds and can carry about 2.2 pounds of cargo. The next generation is still under development, and is expected to weigh about 6.6 pounds, increasing the load to 11 pounds.
The company uses a back-seat design similar to that of a rocket. The drones take up and take off vertically in a straight position and then switch to a horizontal flight. Airbase indicates that even if a larger aircraft model were to be developed in the future, vertical lift-down capacity would be retained to reduce reliance on runways.
According to the company, Airborn has completed over 13,000 autonomous flights in Bangalore and Gondur in southern India. More than 1,000 of these flights were carried out in cooperation with the Indian hospital network Narayana Health for the transport of diagnostic samples between medical institutions.
On this hospital route, the company currently uses one drone, which is about 2.5 miles away and a single flight of about 7 minutes. In contrast, if the use of road transport is changed, the overall time may be 3 to 5 hours, taking into account that the samples need to be centralized before being shipped uniformly.
Targeting the Three Cities distribution network. Surveillance remains a bottleneck.
Airbund also plans to build a drone distribution network in Andhra Pradesh connecting three cities. The company has signed agreements with the local Government, with the long-term goal of achieving 10,000 single-day flights for retail, electrician and medical distribution.
According to company estimates, 250 to 1,000 aircraft are required to reach this level, depending on the length of the route. The founders predicted that the actual demand would be closer to 250.
However, this cooperation does not include government contracts or subsidies. According to Airbund, the Andhra Pradesh Government is currently primarily assisting in the advancement of regulatory arrangements to support network operations. Companies will continue to rely on the distribution needs of their clients to generate revenue in the future.
Airborn owns a 43,000 square foot plant in Bangalore, and the airframe and core systems are designed and constructed internally. The company did not disclose current capacity and the number of aircraft produced, but stated that manufacturing would not be a major constraint in the expansion phase.
In contrast, regulatory clearance remains a greater obstacle, particularly with regard to over-the-horizon clearance. The extension of the drone distribution network to a higher frequency and longer distance is almost indispensable. As a result of this, Airboard is still in a largely unmaturized phase of income generation, even though the number of teams has exceeded 150.