Startup Deep Dive : Aarav Unmanned Systems — the IIT Kanpur drone pioneer that maps millions of acres but still runs at a loss

A company that has flown cameras over more than 5.5 million acres of Indian land, 500-plus mines and 30,000 villages still booked under ₹60 crore in revenue in the year to March 2024 — and it lost roughly a quarter of every rupee it earned. That gap, between owning a frontier and making money from it, is the whole story of Aarav Unmanned Systems.

The firm, which now trades as Aereo, was born in a research lab at IIT Kanpur in 2013, years before India had a drone law worth the name. It has since become one of the country’s few end-to-end commercial drone companies, counting Tata Steel, Hindalco and Coal India among its clients. It has also spent most of its existence in the red, which makes it a useful case study in how hard it is to turn an early technology lead into a durable business.

Quick facts

What Aarav Unmanned Systems does

Aereo sells aerial intelligence, not just drones. It runs the full chain: flying industrial-grade drones over a client’s site, capturing imagery and sensor data, and turning that into measurements a business can act on. The pitch is that a mine, a highway project or a district land-records office does not want a flying camera; it wants numbers it can trust.

• Aerial surveys: high-resolution mapping of mines, stockyards, construction sites, farmland and villages.
• Data and analytics: volumetric analysis (how much ore or coal is in a stockpile), construction progress monitoring, land mapping and environmental-compliance reporting, increasingly delivered through an AI-powered analytics platform (company-stated, 2024).
• Sectors served: mining and metals, infrastructure, energy, urban and rural development, land records and agriculture (company-stated).

The origin: a drone startup before the rules existed

Aarav Unmanned Systems was founded in 2013 by Vipul Singh and Suhas Bansiwala out of the research labs at IIT Kanpur. The timing was the hard part. India would not issue its first formal civil-drone regulations until December 2018, so for roughly its first five years the company was building a commercial drone business in a country where flying one commercially sat in a legal grey zone.

The founding insight was that the value in drones was never going to be the hardware. Anyone could import a quadcopter. The defensible business was in doing the boring, high-stakes work around it: flying to survey-grade accuracy, processing terabytes of imagery, and handing an industrial client a number it could put in an audit or a government filing. That framing — sell the answer, not the aircraft — is what later let the company reposition as an intelligence company rather than a manufacturer.

The struggle years

For a deep-tech company selling to conservative buyers, the early years were a grind, and the record shows it in two ways.

First, regulation. Commercial drone flights had no clear legal basis in India until the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s rules took effect on 1 December 2018, and even then the framework was restrictive and slow. A company that had already existed for five years by that point had spent half its life selling into uncertainty, which throttled how fast large, compliance-sensitive clients could commit.

Second, money. The company’s financials confirm it has never had the luxury of profitability. It stayed loss-making even as revenue grew, and its reported FY24 numbers show the strain: EBITDA fell about 30.8% year on year even as the top line rose (Tofler). Building survey-grade capability, keeping engineers and absorbing the cost of pilot projects with slow-moving industrial and government buyers kept expenses ahead of income. The pre-Series A round in March 2018 was raised for an undisclosed amount, a sign of how modest the early capital base was.

The turning point: the Aereo rebrand and Series B

Two events, roughly two years apart, reset the company. On 26 September 2022 — nine years to the day after it was incorporated — Aarav Unmanned Systems rebranded to Aereo. The name fuses “aerial” with “EO,” for electro-optical, and the point of the exercise was to stop looking like a drone manufacturer and start looking like a data company with a “Make in India, for the World” ambition.

The harder proof came on 19 July 2024, when Aereo announced a $15 million Series B round led by 360 ONE Asset, with participation from StartupXseed Ventures and Navam Capital. That single round was larger than the company’s entire annual revenue at the time. It was capital raised explicitly to build the AI analytics platform and push automation, and it is the clearest signal that investors were betting the business could finally convert its survey lead into recurring, software-like revenue. On either side of that event sits the contradiction: a firm with a commanding operational footprint, still spending more than it earned, using outside money to buy its way to the next stage.

The money behind it

Aereo’s cap table is a who’s-who of Indian deep-tech and early-stage investors, built up over roughly eight rounds since 2013.

• Pre-Series A (March 2018): led by GrowX Ventures and 500 Startups, with existing backers 3one4 Capital and StartupXseed and angel Sanjay Jesrani participating. Amount undisclosed.
• Series B (announced 19 July 2024): $15 million led by 360 ONE Asset, with StartupXseed Ventures and Navam Capital. Used for automation and the AI-powered drone-data analytics platform (company-stated).
• Other named investors across rounds: Auxano Capital, JSW Ventures, KITVEN, Kittur Family Trust and Ashok Atluri, managing director of Zen Technologies (Tracxn / Crunchbase).
• Total raised: reported at about $16.8 million across five rounds by Inc42, and about $23.1 million across eight rounds by Crunchbase and Tracxn — the trackers disagree, so treat the figure as a range.
• Valuation: not disclosed after the Series B (Tracxn, as of October 2024).

How it makes money

The business model is a services-plus-software hybrid, and understanding where the margin sits is the key to reading the company.

• Money in: project fees for aerial surveys and mapping, and analytics or subscription fees for the software that turns that imagery into volumetric, monitoring and compliance outputs.
• Costs out: engineering and pilot talent, drone hardware and maintenance, data-processing compute, and the cost of running proof-of-concept projects for large, slow-to-sign industrial and government buyers.
• Where the margin sits: the survey work is labour- and hardware-intensive and hard to scale; the analytics layer is the part that can carry software-like margins. The Series B was raised precisely to shift weight from the first to the second.
• The part people get wrong: Aereo is not primarily a drone maker. Its own repositioning is around aerial data and intelligence — the aircraft is a means of data capture, not the product.

The numbers

Aereo is small and still unprofitable. Revenue is growing at a modest clip, well below the pace usually associated with venture-backed deep tech, and losses have persisted. Because it is a private company, only filed and third-party figures are available; the table below labels each.

Two things stand out. FY24 revenue of ₹59.7 crore (about $6.2 million) grew just 13.6% over FY23, and the company still ran a net margin near -24.8%, with EBITDA down about 30.8% year on year (Tofler). The one bright line in the filings is net worth, up about 131% in FY24 — but that reflects fresh equity from the funding round, not operating profit. The company’s own claim of “400% revenue growth over the past two years,” made at the Series B in July 2024, sits awkwardly against the single-digit-to-teens annual growth the filed revenue shows, so it is best read as a longer-horizon, company-stated figure rather than a recent annual rate.

Where the money comes from

Aereo’s revenue is concentrated in heavy industry and government, not consumer or logistics drones.

• Mining and metals: the anchor segment. Aereo has worked with Tata Steel since 2019, digitalising more than 27 critical mining operations, and lists Hindalco and Coal India as clients (company-stated, via Inc42).
• Scale of operations (company-stated, 2022): more than 5.5 million acres mapped, 500-plus mines and 350-plus stockyards covered, 30,000-plus villages and 45-plus cities surveyed.
• Infrastructure, land records and rural development: survey and mapping work for construction monitoring, land-record digitisation and environmental compliance.
• The surprise: for a “drone company,” the money comes overwhelmingly from unglamorous industrial measurement — counting ore in a stockpile and tracking a project’s progress — rather than from selling aircraft or flashy aerial imagery.

The risks

• Persistent losses and thin growth: a net margin near -24.8% in FY24 (Tofler) on revenue growing only 13.6% is a difficult combination. If growth stays in the teens, the path to profitability depends on the analytics mix improving faster than costs, which is not guaranteed.
• Customer concentration in cyclical industries: revenue leans on mining, metals and infrastructure clients such as Tata Steel, Hindalco and Coal India. These are large but cyclical buyers with long procurement cycles, so a downturn or a single lost account can hit hard.
• Regulatory and competitive dependence: the business is exposed to India’s evolving drone rules, which shape what can be flown, where and by whom. At the same time the sector has crowded with well-funded rivals and defence-adjacent players, and third-party trackers show Aereo’s reported headcount falling sharply into 2026 — from around 258 (Inc42) to roughly 133 by May 2026 (Tracxn) — a figure worth watching as a sign of cost discipline or of pressure.

The takeaway

Aereo’s real lesson is about the difference between being first and being profitable. Getting to a frontier early — in this case, commercial drones years before India had rules for them — buys you clients, reference projects and a genuine operational lead. It does not, on its own, buy you margins. A decade after incorporation, the company has mapped an extraordinary share of the country and still has to prove it can make money doing so. The bet the Series B represents is that the value migrates from the flight to the data, and that software economics eventually rescue a services business. For any founder building deep tech into a slow, regulated market, that is the trade to price in from day one: the lead is real, but the payoff is patient.

Frequently asked questions

Is Aarav Unmanned Systems the same company as Aereo?

Yes. Aarav Unmanned Systems Private Limited rebranded to Aereo on 26 September 2022. The legal entity name is unchanged in filings (CIN U35122KA2013PTC141030); “Aereo” is the brand it now trades under.

Who founded Aarav Unmanned Systems and when?

It was founded in 2013 by Vipul Singh and Suhas Bansiwala in the research labs of IIT Kanpur. Vipul Singh is the CEO. The company was incorporated on 26 September 2013.

How much money has Aereo raised?

Reported totals differ by tracker: about $16.8 million across five rounds (Inc42) to about $23.1 million across eight rounds (Crunchbase / Tracxn). Its largest disclosed round was a $15 million Series B in July 2024, led by 360 ONE Asset.

Is Aereo profitable?

No. It remained loss-making in FY24, with a net margin of about -24.8% (Tofler) on operating revenue of ₹59.7 crore. It is a private, unlisted company.

What does Aereo actually sell?

End-to-end aerial intelligence: it flies industrial drones to survey mines, stockyards, construction sites, farmland and villages, then delivers measurements and analytics such as volumetric estimates, construction monitoring and land mapping to clients including Tata Steel, Hindalco and Coal India.

Sources

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

• Tofler, Aarav Unmanned Systems Private Limited — company details and FY24 financials (accessed September 2026)
• ZaubaCorp, Aarav Unmanned Systems Private Limited — CIN, incorporation, directors, capital (accessed September 2026)
• Inc42, “Aereo — Funding, Revenue & Investors,” and “Drone Startup Aereo Bags $15 Mn,” July 2024 (accessed September 2026)
• Crunchbase, Aereo / Aarav Unmanned Systems company profile (accessed September 2026)
• Tracxn, Aereo and Aarav Unmanned Systems Private Limited profiles (accessed September 2026)
• BW Businessworld, “Aarav Unmanned Systems Rebrands As Aereo,” September 2022
• MediaBrief, “Drone-tech startup Aarav Unmanned Systems rebrands to Aereo,” September 2022
• TechStory / Geospatial World, Aarav Unmanned Systems pre-Series A funding, March 2018
• PR Newswire, “Aereo secures $15 million in Series B funding round,” July 2024
• Trading Economics, USD/INR reference rate, 18 September 2026

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