Kamikaze drone startup Apollyon Dynamics secures ₹20 crore valuation amid growing order pipeline

Ajmer-based Jayant Khatri and Kolkata-based Sourya Choudhury have been in the news lately for their Kamikaze drones that a series of army regiments have ordered, making it BITS Pilani Hyderabad’s first student startup to have engaged with the national defence forces.

Started in their college dorm, these two 20-year-old students share with Fortune India’s Vidhi Taparia what is next for their defence tech startup Apollyon Dynamics after receiving commendation from Union ministers and massive popularity that followed. Edited excerpts from the interaction.

Q: How did Apollyon Dynamics start and how did it gain so much popularity?

Choudhury: We met in our first year of college. Khatri was more interested in terrestrial robotics, he had built smart glasses, rovers, and I was more into remodelling, airplanes, drones. I had built a rudimentary drone which was for weather mapping. We co-founded the BITS Hyderabad Defence Technology Society called Vidrohi Systems, and soon we started drone racing. This is where we borrowed the name Apollyon from our name Team Napoleon. We competed at both national and international level drone racing leagues like Indian Drone Racing League Society of Automotive Engineers, and the International Drone Racing event at IIT Bombay. Initially, we started off pretty badly, not because our prototypes were bad, but because I was a terrible pilot.

That's when earlier this year, we started actual development work on defence drones. Around March, we started developing the Kamikaze drone. We had to make it out of our dorm rooms, got a 3D printer, some carbon fibre sheets. Initially it was a painful task, wearing N95 masks in our rooms and building this. We had a prototype for the Kamikaze drone ready by early May, something that could actually accomplish the 300 kmph dive speed and the manoeuvrability.

We also worked on developing a lot of other different drone types like trainer drones, payload dropper drones, multi role drones for night vision infrared vision, and we supply to a lot of units.

We used to do a lot of cold mailing simultaneously and then within two weeks of completion of our final prototype, one lieutenant from Chandi Mandir decided to give us a shot. The next day a brigadier came along and officers from units around the area around Haryana came along. Thus, from referrals, we started getting more orders from units across the country.

(Once the startup received validation from the Army, it came to the attention of the Centre, bringing with it recognition from Union ministers and the media.)

Q. How is engaging with the national defence forces different?

Khatri: Currently, we sell our products to individual regiments like the CEOs and Second in-commands of individual regiments who are usually colonels. So, we sell it to people of that level. The Ministry of Defence has reached out to us, and good things are coming soon.

Choudhury: It is a proper procedure. To engage with the government, there is a rule for Chinese products, the government says we should at least use 40%-50% of Indian components. Army was mostly concerned about the Chinese products, so following that the flight controller that we are using right now is Indian, that has helped and saved us a lot of money.

Q. What happened after the massive media attention you received in recent days?

Choudhury: We are currently swamped with orders from more than 10 regiments across the country, with each placing multiple unit orders. Some of these regiments are from Jammu and Arunachal Pradesh.

The first one itself was a multi-lakh order, and since then with the media attention that we have got, potential orders have risen by 600-800%, that too within a span of 2 months.

Khatri: I am now getting 300-400 calls per day, including Army, potential investors and media.

Q. What is your next plan of action – raising funds or expanding the product lineup?

Khatri: Right now, we are working on making our products even better. We are doing a lot of R&D, working on some tech where a lot of drones work together through single protocol, and anti-drone systems, so that we sell the problem and the solution, the drone and the anti-drone system. We also want to give a very good after service to make it very reliable and we get a lot of retention. We are not just a drone company; we are a defence tech company. [not worried about the orders because] We are getting referrals, later on we can go on to exhibit our products, that is a probable go-to-market strategy.

We're just in talks with a lot of VCs and angel investors. We have recently raised around ₹30 lakh at a valuation of ₹20 crore under the NIDHI Seed Support Program of Department of Science and Technology through their college’s incubator society, PIEDS. Our plan is to raise funds; we will be hiring for marketing, with some seasoned professionals expected to be joining the team.

For a manufacturing facility, we are in talks with a Telangana IAS officer, he might provide us with some facility to manufacture and the funds we raise will be deployed to set up this small unit for manufacturing products, and for procurement of all components as well.

Q. With a startup built during your college days, what happens to the work-life balance?

Khatri: Earlier, we both had an active life outside of Apollyon, but right now it is just this.

Choudhury: Before we started this, I had a pretty good life outside this. I used to be an instrumentalist for a band. I mostly gave up all of that for the startup.

Khatri: We will be going in our 3rd year. We both are dual degree students. I'm economics plus mechanical, Sourya is physics plus electronics, so we have total of 5 year of college, out of which only 2 are done. Additionally, at BITS, we have a 0% attendance policy, by studies we are very relieved in that sense. So, I don’t think that will be a problem. Here, there are a few people who have their own startups, overall, across the country, BITS ecosystem is very healthy.

Q. What is the way ahead for both of you individually - would you be open to selling this off to join the Googles and the Metas of the world?

Khatri and Choudhury (in unison): No, not at all. Our plan is to focus on our startup full-time.

Choudhury: We will now do private use cases, and we will also intend to eventually manufacture for international customers, because India is now focusing on exporting to foreign markets as far as possible, consider exports to Armenia, the Philippines, to expand our defence exports.