As battleground tactics shift, startup Unmannd bets on autonomous drones

Company develops AI-powered platforms as recent conflicts expose vulnerabilities of traditional defence systems to drone swarms

Recent global conflicts have exposed a critical vulnerability in modern warfare: swarms of low-cost drones can overwhelm sophisticated defence systems costing billions of dollars. To counter this disproportionate price-results imbalance, defence technology startup Unmannd - whose name reflects its core products - is building autonomous aerial platforms designed to counter such threats through AI-driven decision-making and multi-agent coordination.

 

The Bengaluru-based company, founded earlier this year by former defence engineers Yeshwanth Reddy and Hemaditya Prasad, targets India's expanding $25 billion defence manufacturing sector, where unmanned systems have been designated a priority category.

 

“The future of defence and security is all about building drones that are smarter than those of the adversaries,” says Reddy, co-founder and chief executive of Unmannd. “That’s exactly what we’re building at Unmannd, systems that think ahead, collaborate seamlessly, and operate where others cannot.”

 

The company's full-stack approach combines custom compute hardware, AI-driven autonomy, multi-agent mesh networking, and aerospace-grade avionics. This enables it to create drones that can perceive their surroundings, act autonomously, and engage faster than the adversary.

 

India's Defense Production and Export Promotion policy targets $25 billion in manufacturing and $5 billion in exports by 2025, with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a priority sector. The global defence drone market is projected to reach $87 billion by 2030, highlighting the massive opportunity for indigenous solutions.

 

Investors say the defence industry is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades. Unmannd's vision was validated when it recently raised $2 million in a pre-seed round from Accel and Speciale Invest.

 

“What we're seeing is a shift toward systems that can learn, adapt, and make decisions independently - capabilities that will define the next generation of defence technology,” says Prashanth Prakash, partner at Accel.

 

“Yeshwanth and Hemaditya bring a unique blend of technical vision and operational experience that's rare in this space,” he adds.

 

The funding will accelerate commercialisation of  the company’s aerial logistics platform Titan and Fury, an anti-unmanned aerial system interceptor, from proof-of-concept to deployment, and support hiring and international export readiness.

 

The firm is expected to scale its engineering team and keep advancing its autonomy stack. It also plans to explore early export opportunities to allied nations, positioning India at the forefront of next-gen defence technologies.

 

Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner, Speciale Invest, said Unmannd’s calibre in building and executing drone operations across critical sectors in India and Southeast Asia positions them ideally for the challenge.

 

“Their approach of re-architecting drones ground-up for contested environments is exactly what India and its allies need,” Rajaram says.