Indian startup Airbound has raised $37 million in a Series A round led by Greenoaks, with backing from DoorDash, Lachy Groom, Lightspeed and Humba Ventures, as it seeks to make drone-based delivery as cheap as trucking. The three-year-old company builds vertical-flight, rocket-like drones designed to weigh less than the cargo they carry, aiming to close the cost gap that has kept aerial logistics from matching the scale of road transport.

The funding follows an $8.65 million seed round raised less than a year ago, taking Airbound's total raised to nearly $50 million. Its current drone, the TRT, weighs about 3.3 pounds and carries 2.2 pounds, with a larger successor in development expected to weigh 6.6 pounds and carry up to 11 pounds. The startup has flown more than 13,000 autonomous missions in Bengaluru and Guntur, including over 1,000 flights transporting diagnostic samples for Narayana Health, and has signed an agreement with the Andhra Pradesh state government to build a three-city drone network targeting 10,000 flights a day.