Zerodha’s Rainmatter Leads INR 12.5 Crore Seed Funding in AquaAirX to Build Next-Gen Amphibious Drones and HAUVs

AquaAirX, a deep-tech startup building amphibious and underwater autonomous platforms, has raised INR 12.5 crore in a seed funding round led by Rainmatter, the investment arm of Zerodha, founded by Nithin Kamath. The round also saw participation from Prime Venture Partners, Wyser, and India Accelerator.

The funds will be used to strengthen AquaAirX’s core technology, including system autonomy, air-to-water transition reliability, sensing and communication capabilities, and to expand its engineering and research teams across robotics, autonomy, controls, and embedded systems. The company will also focus on testing, validation, and certification to defence-grade standards, while preparing for pilot deployments with strategic customers.

Founded by Jitendra Kumar Purnmal Saini and Gouthami T S, AquaAirX is developing a first-of-its-kind amphibious unmanned platform that can seamlessly transition between aerial flight and underwater operations. This removes the need for separate aerial and underwater drones, allowing missions to continue across air and sea without redeployment. The platforms are designed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, offering faster response times, lower operational risk, and improved mission flexibility.

Alongside its amphibious drone platform, AquaAirX is also developing a Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV) for precise underwater inspection, monitoring, and intervention, aimed at defence and high-value commercial applications.

Gouthami T S, Co-Founder & CEO, AquaAirX: "The future of maritime intelligence and surveillance will be defined by platforms that can seamlessly operate across domains. This funding allows us to accelerate our vision of building indigenous, mission-ready amphibious and underwater autonomous systems that fundamentally change how maritime operations are conducted, for both defence and critical commercial applications."

Jitendra Kumar Purnmal Saini, Co-founder & CTO, AquaAirX: "Today’s maritime operations are constrained by siloed platforms that operate either in the air or underwater, creating gaps in intelligence, response time, and operational continuity. Our vision is to eliminate this fragmentation by building autonomous systems that can seamlessly transition across domains while remaining reliable, covert, and mission-ready. This funding allows us to tackle some of the hardest engineering problems in autonomy, controls, and systems integration, and to mature our technology into platforms that can operate in real-world, defence-grade environments.

Abhinav Singh Negi, Investment Manager, Rainmatter said, “We invested in AquaAirX because they are not just building a vehicle, but laying the foundational architecture for true autonomy across air and underwater domains. The team is tackling one of the hardest engineering problems—multi-domain autonomous operations—with rare clarity and ambition.

What stood out to us was their systems-level thinking, defence-grade approach, and long-term vision to create highly sophisticated autonomous platforms that can redefine maritime and aerial operations. We strongly believe AquaAirX has the potential to emerge as a category-defining company in next-generation autonomous systems.”

Over the past 12 months, AquaAirX has reached Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 for its flagship amphibious platform. The company has been selected for the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) NeuSPHERE program, cleared multiple milestones under India’s iDEX initiative, and received recognition through IDEABAAZ and the HDFC Tech Innovators program. These milestones have helped validate the technology and build early global partnerships.

Looking ahead, AquaAirX plans to deepen collaborations with Indian and international defence partners, scale up large-scale trials, and prepare for manufacturing, with the aim of entering defence and commercial markets by 2027.