Our Investment in Unmannd: Re-defining Aerial Autonomy for India’s Strategic Edge
- Nithish Kumar
- Sep 30
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 30
The Future of Aerial Warfare Is Intelligent, Autonomous, and Swarming
In the past decade, conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East have shown us a new doctrine of war: one where low-cost drones are rewriting the rules of the battlefield. Nuclear bombers worth billions have been neutralized by kamikaze drones priced at a fraction of the cost. Skirmishes at borders, proxy fights, and infrastructure sabotage are now fought as much by unmanned aerial systems as by conventional forces.
The message is clear: aerial autonomy is no longer an experiment — it is the frontline.
But here’s the challenge: most drones in use today are brittle. They depend on GPS, crumble under jamming or spoofing, and rely on centralized operators. In real combat, that fragility can cost lives.
Unmannd — Intelligence at the Edge
This is where Unmannd’s drones come in!
Unlike generic drone makers, Unmannd is building intelligent aerial platforms designed for contested environments — drones that:
Navigate without GPS in jammed/denied zones
Communicate securely under jamming
Detect and track threats in real time on the edge
Fly and fight as coordinated swarms
Their first two systems, Titan (aerial logistics) and Fury (loitering munition), are engineered with a full-stack approach: custom hardware accelerated compute, AI-driven navigation, resilient multi-agent mesh communication, and swarm autonomy baked in. The result: drones that are faster, efficient, and more resilient than conventional platforms.
Why Now — The Strategic Urgency
Three forces make Unmannd’s mission timely:
Geopolitical turbulence — From the Indo-Pacific to the Arctic, multipolar contestation is driving new security needs. India itself faces pressure to secure long borders and maritime choke points.
Shift to low-cost aerial warfare — As seen in Ukraine and elsewhere, mass-deployed drones are overwhelming traditional, expensive defence systems. The future belongs to distributed autonomous mass.
India’s push for indigenisation — With the Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy targeting $25B in defence manufacturing and $5B exports by 2025, drones are a priority category.
The global defence drone market is projected to more than double to $60B by 2030 — and India is uniquely positioned to build sovereign, export-ready solutions.
The Founders — Veteran Builders of Aerial Platforms
Unmannd is led by Yeshwanth and Hemaditya, two builders who combine entrepreneurial resilience with deep technical expertise.
Yeshwanth is a third-time founder, having previously built Aereo (India’s leading drone services firm) and F-drones (a Singapore-based maritime logistics startup). Over the past decade, he has designed, tested, and deployed drones in some of the toughest environments — from defence and border security to critical sectors like oil & gas and maritime logistics across Southeast Asia. This journey gave him not only a strong grasp of UAV engineering but also firsthand experience of selling into highly regulated, conservative markets where reliability and compliance matter as much as performance.
Hemaditya, an embedded systems engineer, complements this with deep expertise in aerospace avionics, having built hard real-time systems like autopilots, mission-critical communication stacks, and high-speed digital designs that meet stringent safety standards. At Unmannd, he extends this foundation into next-generation autonomy, driving the company’s intelligence stack with edge AI for real-time decision-making, reinforcement learning for adaptive control, digital twin frameworks for rapid validation, and multi-agent swarm autonomy for scalable collaboration—combining the rigor of aerospace engineering with the agility of modern AI to deliver autonomous systems that are resilient, safe, and self-evolving.
Together, they bring the scale-up and sales DNA to break into defence markets and the technical ingenuity to engineer drones that can operate in the harshest, most contested environments — from Himalayan logistics to swarm combat. Their track record reflects both technical grit and commercial savvy — exactly what’s needed to succeed in defence markets where innovation, resilience, and credibility must go hand in hand.
Why We Backed Unmannd
At Speciale, we invest in founders building the hardest, most consequential technologies of our time. Here’s what convinced us to lead Unmannd’s pre-seed round:
Full-Stack Innovation: From hardware-software co-design to swarm behaviors, Unmannd is re-architecting drones for the realities of contested combat from the ground up.
Dual-Use Potential: Logistics supply in extreme terrains, loitering munitions, counter-drone — all on a shared platform.
Sovereign & Strategic: Homegrown autonomy stack reduces dependence on imports and strengthens India’s defence posture.
Rare Team DNA: Yeshwanth and Hemaditya have repeatedly shown they can build, sell, and scale aerial platforms in complex, and highly regulated markets.
What’s Next
This fundraise will power Unmannd to:
Commercialize Titan for defence logistics (20–30kg payload class)
Advance Fury from proof-of-concept to an operational system
Prove their GPS-denied navigation, edge AI, and swarm stack in live trials
Build early international channels for global exports
The journey ahead is not easy. Defence is capital-intensive, competitive, and slow to adopt. But we believe Unmannd’s technology edge, paired with India’s defence indigenisation push, puts them on the right side of history.
India’s Drone Revolution
For all our progress in space and missiles, India has not performed as well in drones. Despite a strong engineering base, most of our UAV systems have been either imported, derivative, or too limited in capability to compete with global peers. In a world where conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza are being shaped by drones, this gap is no longer a tactical inconvenience — it’s a strategic vulnerability.
That tide is now turning. With a new generation of founders rethinking drones from first principles, India has the chance to leapfrog — building sovereign, intelligent, and resilient aerial systems that can stand up to contested environments.
This is the mission Unmannd embodies. By combining deep technical innovation with proven execution, they are pushing India into the frontlines of autonomous aerial warfare and logistics.
We are proud to be the first believers in Unmannd Autonomy — a company re-defining what aerial autonomy means for India, and setting the stage for the country’s long-overdue drone revolution.
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About Speciale Invest
Founded in 2017 by visionary partners Vishesh Rajaram and Arjun Rao, Speciale Invest is a seed-stage venture capital firm dedicated to backing deep tech founders solving complex global challenges. We invest early — at the pre-seed and seed stages — and partner closely through the zero-to-one journey with capital, strategic guidance, business development, and hiring support.
Our focus spans six transformative themes:
Energy Transition & Planetary Health
Advanced Manufacturing & Industrial Modernization
Beyond Earth & Space Technology
Advanced Software, Computing & AI
Biosciences, Life Sciences & Healthtech
Defence & Sovereign Systems
We thrive in the risk and complexity of pre-product deep tech ventures and are proud to champion globally relevant companies built from India. Explore our portfolio here.
If you’re building something ambitious and exciting in deeptech or deepscience, we’d love to hear from you: info@specialeinvest.com