During India’s 2020 lockdown, when schools were closed and teenagers were confined to their homes, 15 year old Naman Pushp decided to build something. Already fascinated by robotics, he turned his spare time into an engineering experiment and began developing his own drone.
He called the project Open Drone and entered it into a hackathon, where the idea won him $500. Instead of spending the prize money, Pushp reinvested it into the project and used it to develop a more advanced prototype.
That early drone still hangs in the office of the company it eventually inspired.
Pushp’s fascination with engineering began years before the lockdown. During his childhood in Malaysia, he started building simple robots while studying in Classes 5 and 6. Robotics competitions and hands on engineering projects gradually turned building and experimenting into a serious passion.
Born in Mumbai, Pushp also spent parts of his childhood in Hyderabad and Malaysia before returning to India. He later attended Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai, where his interest increasingly shifted toward learning through experimentation rather than simply following conventional academic routes.
As Pushp experimented with drones, he identified a fundamental challenge in the industry. Conventional aircraft can spend a significant portion of their energy carrying their own weight, leaving less efficiency for the actual cargo they are supposed to transport.
For drone delivery to compete economically with traditional road transportation, Pushp believed the equation needed to change. Instead of designing aircraft primarily around the vehicle itself, Airbound focused on creating lightweight systems capable of carrying meaningful amounts of cargo.
Airbound’s technology has moved beyond laboratory prototypes. The company says it has completed more than 13,000 autonomous flights across Bengaluru and Guntur, demonstrating that its aircraft can operate in real world environments.
More than 1,000 of those flights have been conducted for Narayana Health, where Airbound drones transport blood samples between a clinic and a hospital. The technology is helping replace ground transportation on the route and create a faster aerial link between healthcare facilities.
The approach has even influenced infrastructure planning.
Airbound is now looking beyond individual delivery routes toward larger drone logistics networks. In Andhra Pradesh, the company plans to connect Amaravati, Vijayawada and Guntur, with an ambitious long term target of reaching 10,000 flights a day.
The project is also receiving support from the state government, which is working on a network of ground observers. Such infrastructure could allow private drone operators to use the network while maintaining visual line of sight requirements for flights.
The vision is to make drone delivery more than a futuristic concept.
Airbound has raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Greenoaks, taking the company’s total funding to nearly $50 million. The investment gives Pushp and his team greater resources to expand their technology, operations and manufacturing capabilities.
The next major challenge is producing aircraft at scale. Airbound is developing lightweight carbon fibre aircraft and plans to build a model capable of carrying a 5 kilogram payload, opening the door to a wider range of commercial applications.
Pushp’s journey captures the remarkable evolution of an idea born during lockdown.
During India’s 2020 lockdown, when schools were closed and teenagers were confined to their homes, 15 year old Naman Pushp decided to build something. Already fascinated by robotics, he turned his spare time into an engineering experiment and began developing his own drone.
During India’s 2020 lockdown, when schools were closed and teenagers were confined to their homes, 15 year old Naman Pushp decided to build something. Already fascinated by robotics, he turned his spare time into an engineering experiment and began developing his own drone.
He called the project Open Drone and entered it into a hackathon, where the idea won him $500. Instead of spending the prize money, Pushp reinvested it into the project and used it to develop a more advanced prototype.
That early drone still hangs in the office of the company it eventually inspired.
Pushp’s fascination with engineering began years before the lockdown. During his childhood in Malaysia, he started building simple robots while studying in Classes 5 and 6. Robotics competitions and hands on engineering projects gradually turned building and experimenting into a serious passion.
Born in Mumbai, Pushp also spent parts of his childhood in Hyderabad and Malaysia before returning to India. He later attended Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai, where his interest increasingly shifted toward learning through experimentation rather than simply following conventional academic routes.
As Pushp experimented with drones, he identified a fundamental challenge in the industry. Conventional aircraft can spend a significant portion of their energy carrying their own weight, leaving less efficiency for the actual cargo they are supposed to transport.
For drone delivery to compete economically with traditional road transportation, Pushp believed the equation needed to change. Instead of designing aircraft primarily around the vehicle itself, Airbound focused on creating lightweight systems capable of carrying meaningful amounts of cargo.
Airbound’s technology has moved beyond laboratory prototypes. The company says it has completed more than 13,000 autonomous flights across Bengaluru and Guntur, demonstrating that its aircraft can operate in real world environments.
More than 1,000 of those flights have been conducted for Narayana Health, where Airbound drones transport blood samples between a clinic and a hospital. The technology is helping replace ground transportation on the route and create a faster aerial link between healthcare facilities.
The approach has even influenced infrastructure planning.
Airbound is now looking beyond individual delivery routes toward larger drone logistics networks. In Andhra Pradesh, the company plans to connect Amaravati, Vijayawada and Guntur, with an ambitious long term target of reaching 10,000 flights a day.
The project is also receiving support from the state government, which is working on a network of ground observers. Such infrastructure could allow private drone operators to use the network while maintaining visual line of sight requirements for flights.
The vision is to make drone delivery more than a futuristic concept.
Airbound has raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Greenoaks, taking the company’s total funding to nearly $50 million. The investment gives Pushp and his team greater resources to expand their technology, operations and manufacturing capabilities.
The next major challenge is producing aircraft at scale. Airbound is developing lightweight carbon fibre aircraft and plans to build a model capable of carrying a 5 kilogram payload, opening the door to a wider range of commercial applications.
Pushp’s journey captures the remarkable evolution of an idea born during lockdown.