Startup Deep Dive : Throttle Aerospace Systems — India’s first DGCA type-certified civil drone, then a boardroom split

In November 2023, Throttle Aerospace Systems won something no Indian civil drone maker had held before: a full DGCA Type Certificate, granted for a sub-5 kg aircraft called DOPO that can stay in the air for 49 minutes and map 1.5 sq km in a single flight. It was the clean, regulator-stamped proof of concept the company had chased since 2016.

The contradiction sits in the timing. By the time that certificate arrived, the four people who built Throttle had already walked out. In July 2023 the founder and his entire leadership team resigned, and by September they were in front of the National Company Law Tribunal fighting the majority owner that had bought into their company barely a year earlier. This is the story of how an engineering-first startup became India’s regulatory front-runner in drones, and how the deal meant to scale it nearly tore it apart.

Quick facts

What they do

Throttle Aerospace Systems designs, engineers and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles, and writes the flight and ground-control software that runs them. It sells to three broad buyers, described on its own and its parent’s sites as follows:

• Enterprise: survey, mapping, inspection, agriculture and disaster-management operators who need certified, repeatable flights (company-stated).
• Defence: Throttle holds a licence from the Ministry of Defence to manufacture military-grade drones (company-stated).
• Delivery: beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) cargo, including the medical-delivery work that first put the company on the map.

The manufacturing base is a facility near Narsapura in Karnataka’s Kolar district, with research units in Delhi and Bengaluru (company-stated). Its calling card is regulatory: Throttle describes itself as India’s first DGCA-approved maker of civil drones.

The origin

Throttle was incorporated on 8 January 2016, according to its Ministry of Corporate Affairs record, well before India had a workable civil-drone rulebook. Its founder, Nagendran Kandasamy, had come up through the parts of Indian aerospace that take certification seriously. He had worked at Boeing and, earlier, at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, and he built Throttle around a bet that the Indian drone market would eventually be won not by whoever flew first, but by whoever could fly legally.

That was an unusual bet in 2016. At the time, civilian drone flying in India sat in a grey zone; the regulator had effectively grounded commercial operations pending rules. A hardware startup choosing to court the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, rather than route around it, was choosing the slow, expensive road. The insight was that a certificate would one day be worth more than a head start, because it would be the thing enterprise and government buyers could actually procure against.

The struggle years

For its first five years Throttle was building certifiable hardware for a market that did not yet legally exist. India’s drone framework lurched through draft rules, a restrictive 2021 set, and then the liberalising Drone Rules 2021 later that year. A small, engineering-led company had to survive that regulatory churn without the volume sales that a settled market would have allowed.

The clearest test came in the pandemic. On 20 August 2021 Throttle led India’s first officially sanctioned BVLOS medical-delivery trial, flown at Gauribidanur on the outskirts of Bengaluru under DGCA supervision, with B2B commerce firm Udaan and Narayana Health among the stakeholders supplying pharmaceuticals. The documented results, as reported at the time:

• Two aircraft tested: the Medcopter X4 and the Medcopter X8.
• Flights inside a 15 km radius, carrying packages of up to 2 kg.
• Delivery distances of 2 km to 7 km, averaging about 3.5 km in five to seven minutes.

It was a genuine first, and it proved the drones worked. What it did not do was pay the bills; trials are not recurring revenue. A hardware-and-certification company can prove everything technically and still be short of the capital needed to industrialise. That gap is what set up the pivotal decision of 2022.

The turning point

The single turning-point event is the RattanIndia deal of 2022, and the numbers sit either side of it cleanly. On one side was a technically validated but under-capitalised startup: India’s first company to complete BVLOS trials and submit recommendations to the DGCA, holder of a provisional DGCA licence and an MoD manufacturing licence, but with paid-up capital of only about Rs 15.6 lakh.

On the other side was a listed conglomerate with capital to deploy. In March 2022 RattanIndia Enterprises earmarked Rs 100 crore for its drone arm NeoSky India, targeting a commercial rollout in the first quarter of 2023. Then on 26 May 2022, NeoSky acquired a 60% controlling stake in Throttle; the founding team retained 40%. The deal value was not disclosed.

The clearest vindication of the original certification bet came eighteen months later. On 2 November 2023 the DGCA granted Type Certification to Throttle’s DOPO drone, a first for the company and a milestone few Indian makers had reached. DOPO’s certified profile: a “small” class aircraft under 5 kg, 49 minutes of flight time, 32.4 km/hr cruise, coverage of 1.5 sq km per flight, and multi-payload support for survey, mapping, inspection, agriculture, surveillance and disaster management. The certificate was announced under RattanIndia’s banner, with Business Chairperson Anjali Rattan named in the release; by then, the founders were gone.

The money behind it

Throttle’s capital story is short and unusual: it did not run the classic venture-round ladder. It stayed lean, then sold control to a strategic buyer.

• Bootstrapped / lean early stage: no large disclosed venture rounds; authorised capital of Rs 63 lakh and paid-up capital of about Rs 15.6 lakh (Tofler / MCA record).
• Strategic acquirer — NeoSky India (RattanIndia Enterprises): bought 60% on 26 May 2022; deal value undisclosed. This changed everything — it swapped independence for a balance sheet and a distribution platform.
• Parent commitment: RattanIndia earmarked Rs 100 crore for NeoSky in March 2022 to build a “Drones as a Product / Drone as a Service / Software as a Service” business (company-stated).
• Founder stake retained: Kandasamy and co-founders kept 40%, the holding at the centre of the later legal fight.

For scale, RattanIndia describes its wider group as running combined revenue of around Rs 10,000 crore and a market capitalisation of around Rs 15,000 crore across its listed companies, with roughly 2,700 employees (parent, company-stated). Throttle is a small strategic bet inside a large diversified group.

How it makes money

Under the NeoSky umbrella, Throttle’s revenue is designed to come from three linked models rather than one-off hardware sales:

• Drones as a Product (DAAP): selling certified airframes such as DOPO, Nimble, TACT, L-Series and Defender to enterprise and government buyers (company-stated).
• Drone as a Service (DAAS): charging per survey, mapping run or delivery mission instead of selling the aircraft — useful where buyers want output, not asset ownership.
• Software as a Service (SAAS): recurring fees for flight-planning, mapping and data software layered on the hardware.

The part people get wrong: with drones, the margin is meant to migrate from the metal to the mission and the software. Selling a Rs-lakh airframe once is a low-repeat business; selling flight-hours and data subscriptions against a DGCA-certified platform is where durable margin should sit. The certification is the moat that lets Throttle charge for regulated, repeatable service rather than compete purely on airframe price.

The numbers

Throttle is a private company whose granular profit-and-loss is not in the free public record; what is available is directional, from its MCA filings as summarised by Tofler. Treat the following as indicative, not audited line items.

The headline is the sharp FY24 revenue fall and the erosion of net worth — consistent with a company whose leadership left mid-year and whose parent, per the founders’ own account, “nearly halted” financial support during the dispute. Exact rupee figures for revenue and profit or loss are behind Tofler’s paywall and are deliberately not reproduced here.

Where the money comes from

Throttle’s revenue base splits by application and by product line rather than by geography — it is a domestic, India-first manufacturer serving Indian buyers.

• Enterprise (survey, mapping, inspection, agriculture): the volume opportunity, anchored by the DGCA-certified DOPO for repeatable commercial flights.
• Defence: underpinned by the Ministry of Defence manufacturing licence and products such as TACT and Defender; a smaller number of higher-value, procurement-driven deals.
• Delivery / logistics: the BVLOS medical and cargo work (Medcopter lineage) — high-visibility, still early on recurring revenue.

The surprise is where the leverage actually is. The public story is about defence and headline-grabbing medical deliveries, but the certified sub-5 kg DOPO points the durable business at unglamorous enterprise survey and mapping — the flights a regulator will readily approve at scale, and the ones an agriculture or infrastructure buyer will repeat. Throttle also qualifies for the Government of India’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for drones, a policy tailwind that rewards domestic manufacturing value rather than sales alone.

The risks

• Governance and control (disclosed in court filings): after RattanIndia took 60% in May 2022, the founders alleged the majority owner interfered in day-to-day decisions and that “financial support to TAS was nearly halted.” The termination of CFO Girish Reddy triggered the full leadership exodus on 12 July 2023 — founder-CEO Nagendran Kandasamy, COO Nischitha, CFO Reddy and CTO Shashi Kumar R all resigned. Losing an entire founding team is an operational risk, not just a headline.
• Live shareholder litigation: on 31 August 2023 Kandasamy was served notice for removal as director; in September 2023 the founders petitioned the NCLT (Bengaluru), which passed an interim order barring RattanIndia/NeoSky from altering the shareholding structure, with a hearing set for 14 December 2023. RattanIndia had sought to raise authorised capital from Rs 16 lakh to Rs 63 lakh — a move that can dilute a minority. An unresolved 40%-vs-60% dispute is a cloud over any future fundraise or exit.
• Financial fragility: FY24 total revenue fell 65.9% and book net worth 27.6% (Tofler). For a capital-intensive hardware business, a revenue collapse in the same year as a leadership vacuum is a compounding risk to R&D continuity and order fulfilment.
• Competition and commoditisation: India’s drone market has crowded with PLI-backed makers. Certification is a real moat, but airframe prices fall fast; if the DAAS/SAAS revenue does not build, Throttle competes on hardware margin alone.

The takeaway

Throttle Aerospace’s transferable lesson is about the price of the cap table, not the technology. The engineering bet was right: courting the DGCA from 2016, completing India’s first BVLOS trials in 2021, and landing a DOPO Type Certificate in 2023 gave the company a genuine, defensible advantage that competitors could not shortcut. What the founders could not certify was the deal that was supposed to scale all of it. Selling 60% to a strategic partner solved the capital problem and created a control problem, and within about fourteen months the people who understood the product best were arguing their case in a tribunal instead of shipping drones. For any hard-tech founder, the moral is blunt: get the certification right and the shareholder agreement righter, because a moat means little if you lose the keys to the castle.

Frequently asked questions

What does Throttle Aerospace Systems make?

It designs and manufactures drones and the software that runs them, for enterprise (survey, mapping, inspection, agriculture), defence and delivery use. Its product line includes DOPO, Nimble, TACT, L-Series, Defender and the Medcopter delivery drones.

Why is Throttle Aerospace called a “first” in India?

It describes itself as India’s first DGCA-approved civil drone maker and was the first company in India to complete BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) trials and submit recommendations to the DGCA. Its DOPO drone received DGCA Type Certification on 2 November 2023.

Who owns Throttle Aerospace Systems?

RattanIndia Enterprises, through its subsidiary NeoSky India, acquired a 60% controlling stake on 26 May 2022. The founding team retained 40%. The deal value was not disclosed.

Why did the founders leave?

On 12 July 2023 founder-CEO Nagendran Kandasamy and the COO, CFO and CTO all resigned, citing interference from the majority owner and a near-halt in financial support after the CFO’s termination. The founders later took a shareholding dispute to the NCLT.

What are Throttle’s financials?

It is a private company. For the year ended 31 March 2024, Tofler’s summary of its MCA filings puts operating revenue in the Rs 1 crore–100 crore band, with total revenue down 65.9% year-on-year and book net worth down 27.6%. Exact rupee figures are not in the free public record.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Inc42 — “RattanIndia Enterprises Acquires 60% Stake In Drone Startup Throttle Aerospace Systems” (May 2022)
• Inc42 — “Exclusive: Leadership Exodus At Throttle Aerospace Systems; All Executives Step Down” (July 2023)
• Inc42 — “NCLT Halts Changes To Throttle Aerospace’s Shareholding Amidst RattanIndia Dispute” (2023)
• Indian Chemical News / NewsDrum / Devdiscourse — “Throttle Aerospace receives Type-Certification for multipurpose drone DOPO” (November 2023)
• Business Standard — “Udaan, Throttle Aerospace trial run of drone delivery of drugs a success” (August 2021)
• MediaNama / Communications of the ACM — Bengaluru BVLOS medical-delivery trial reports (August 2021)
• RattanIndia Enterprises — Throttle Aerospace Systems page, rattanindia.com (accessed September 2026)
• Throttle Aerospace Systems — About Us, throttle.aero (accessed September 2026)
• Tofler / Zaubacorp — Throttle Aerospace Systems Private Limited, CIN U74900KA2016PTC085161 (company master data and FY24 financial summary, accessed September 2026)
• Crunchbase — Throttle Aerospace Systems company profile (accessed September 2026)

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.