During the 2020 lockdown, while his peers were watching TikTok, Naman Pushp He built a drone out of thin sheets of wood, toothpicks, and duct tape. He was 15 years old and had a fixed idea: to make deliveries so cheap that distance would seem irrelevant. Five years later, that homemade prototype became Airbound, an Indian startup that just raised $8,6 million from people who typically fund space rockets and electric cars. The plan? Deliveries at a penny. Literally. It's not marketing: it's applied physics. An ultralight carbon fiber drone that weighs 1,5 kg and carries 1 kg. It takes off vertically like a rocket and flies like a plane. And it consumes 20 times less energy than an electric scooter.
The problem is simple: too much weight, too much energy
Let's do some math. In India, an electric delivery scooter weighs 150 kg, carries packages weighing up to 3 kg, and It costs about 2 rupees per kilometer of energy (just over 2 cents). The weight-to-load ratio is, let's say, ridiculous. Pushp thought: what if we removed the scooter? And the driver?
The result is deliveries that cost a tenth of a cent per kilometer. Autonomous logistics is a matter of physics and arithmetic. And it's pretty simple, at least in theory: if you weigh less than the others and are more efficient, you win. Period.
The design that Airbound has chosen is called blended-wing-body with configuration tail-sitter. Chevvordì: the drone stands upright, rises vertically like a rocket (without the need for runways or infrastructure), then tilts its body and flies horizontally like an airplane. NASA studies show that this form reduces aerodynamic drag by 30% compared to conventional designs. Traditional quadcopters have four propellers that disturb the airflow. TRT (this is the name of the Airbound drone) he only has two, positioned so as not to interfere with the wings. Result: more lift, less thrust needed to stay in the air, less battery consumption.
The first version of the drone, as mentioned, weighs 1,5 kg and can carry up to 1 kg. The second version, already in development, will weigh 1,2 kg and carry 3 kg. A relationship that is unthinkable in today's drones.
As Pushp says:
“Today it takes four kilos of drone to lift one kilo of cargo. It's absurd.”
From toothpicks to millions
Pushp's story is one of those told at conferences to inspire young entrepreneurs, except here it's true. Lockdown 2020, he's 15 years old, watch a video of Zipline (the American company that delivers blood and vaccines by drones in Africa) and thinks: “I can do this better.”
He builds a prototype out of recycled materials—paper cut into two-dimensional slices held together with toothpicks and tape, then sanded to look like fiberglass. He presents it at a hackathon. He wins $500. He tries it with And Combinator. He is rejected. But he receives $1.000 from the 1517 Fund, then 25.000 from GradCapital, then another 12.000 from Emergent VenturesAt 17 years old the term sheet arrives from Lightspeed Venture PartnersHe waited until he was 18 to sign it. “It was the first legally binding document I signed,” he says.
Today it is 20 years old, has a factory in Bengaluru that produces one drone a day (the goal is to increase to 100 a day by 2027), and has an 8,6 million round led by Lachy Groom, Co-founder of Physical Intelligence, with the participation of senior managers of Tesla, SpaceX e AndurilPeople who don't fund startups as a hobby.
Ultralight drones: batteries make the difference
There's a technical detail that explains why Airbound could really get to the penny per delivery. Standard ultralight drones use lithium-polymer batteries. They last 100-200 charge cycles. Airbound uses lithium-ion batteries, the same ones used in smartphones and electric cars. They last 500-800 cycles. "The biggest cost of running these drones is replacing the batteries," explains Pushp. Doubling (or tripling) the battery life means halving (or trimming) the operating costs.
It's a simple calculation, but no one had done it before because everyone thought of drones as flying gadgets, not industrial logistics systems.
Today, an Airbound drone costs $2.000 to produce and 27 cents to deliver. The goal is to get it below 5 cents by the end of 2026. And to get to one million deliveries per day by mid-2027. It's not fantasy: the startup has already started a pilot program with Narayana Health, one of India's largest hospitals, to deliver blood samples, medical tests, and critical supplies. Ten deliveries a day for three months. Then the number will be scaled up.
Un Martin Luther University study It demonstrated that traditional drones consume 10 times more energy than electric vans in dense urban areas. But those drones weighed 4-5 kg to carry 1 kg. Airbound's model turns the equation on its head: less weight, less energy, more efficiency.
First India, then the United States
Airbound isn't just targeting healthcare. The real market is rapid deliveries, food delivery, and last-mile e-commerce. These are sectors where speed matters more than cost, but where cost ultimately determines who survives. India is the perfect testing ground: dense cities, congested road infrastructure, and relatively progressive regulation on drones (the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (India has already authorized flights beyond visual line of sight under certain conditions.) After reaching one million deliveries a day, Airbound is targeting the United States. In three years, Pushp says.
Logistics is a matter of physics. And physics, it seems, favors the lighter weight.
For small loads, ultralight drones will replace couriers. That's for sure. The only question is who gets there first. Amazon he's been trying for a decade with Prime air. Google ha Wing. Zipline It has made over a million deliveries in Africa. But no one has yet reached a cent per delivery. Perhaps it needed someone who didn't yet know what "impossible" was.
For example, someone who at 15 was building prototypes with toothpicks and now convinces SpaceX managers to fund him.
