In 2024, BITS Hyderabad college students Jayant Khatri and Sourya Choudhury teamed up for the institute’s drone racing and robotics competitors group. After collaborating in each nationwide and worldwide occasions, they noticed the rising significance of Unmanned Aerial Autos (UAVs) in army operations, equivalent to Operation Sindoor, which sparked the thought to construct one thing larger.
“We determined to construct a enterprise after efficiently demonstrating the capabilities of the kamikaze drones to the [Indian] Military, which we had developed in our dorm rooms. This was a part of a no-cost, no-commitment (NCNC) demonstration in Chandimandir, Ambala, Panagarh, and Babina, the place they confirmed important curiosity within the expertise,” Khatri tells YourStory.
That demo led to the primary order of Apollyon Dynamics, the defence tech startup based in 2025. The identify ‘Apollyon’, derived from the Greek phrase Abaddon—a biblical angel of destruction—felt like an acceptable identification for a defence tech enterprise.
Right this moment, the 14-member startup is led by Co-founder and CEO Khatri, with Choudhury managing the tech operation because the CTO. Apollyon Dynamics is predicated on the BITS Hyderabad campus and incubated by Pilani Innovation and Entrepreneurship Improvement Society (PIEDS), with full in-house manufacturing.
Creating UAVs for contemporary warfare
Within the early phases, the founders had the concepts, technical functionality, and motivation, however lacked entry to fabrication labs, high-power electronics services, and primary {hardware} tooling—vital for defence-grade R&D.
“Part sourcing added one other layer of complexity. Most of the high-grade motors, sensors, avionics, batteries, and structural supplies wanted for defence-level UAV work are both costly, imported, restricted, or just unavailable in small prototype portions,” Khatri says.
The defence tech startup spent its earliest months looking for suppliers, negotiating with distributors, validating high quality, and constructing a primary engineering setup that would help iterative prototyping.
“With out this basis, growth couldn’t transfer ahead. Regardless of the hurdles, we acquired our first order from the Indian Military’s Chandimandir base,” he provides.
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The 20-year-old CEO says the group accomplished R&D for its first kamikaze drone in simply two months. The corporate gives 4 major product traces: coach drones, long-range endurance platforms, autonomous multirole UAVs, and kamikaze techniques.
“Our flagship product is the Ahuti, a high-velocity kamikaze drone able to reaching a high pace of 300 km/h whereas carrying a sub-1 kg explosive payload with excessive precision. At Apollyon Dynamics, pace is our unfair benefit,” the CEO says, including that in defence, pace and prolonged vary are premium capabilities, and prospects typically pay 5 to 10 occasions extra for techniques that ship them.
Apollyon Dynamics now provides drones to the Border Safety Forces’ (BSF) Faculty of Drone Warfare and works with a number of personal defence companions because the manufacturing supplier—positioning itself as a B2B and B2G startup.
Outdoors of UAV testing operations, the defence tech startup has labored on explosives testing with the Indian Military.
The startup can also be creating jet-propelled techniques, aiming for 650 km/h (roughly Mach 0.52) and providing a 3-5x pace benefit over electrical propulsion techniques, which usually cap out at 70-120 km/h for loitering munitions.
The business at giant
Apollyon Dynamics not too long ago made quite a lot of noise on the BSF Elevating Day 2025, turning into the primary student-led startup to showcase a kamikaze drone on the occasion. Khatri says their expertise with BSF was “eye-opening”.
“They opened doorways to the Central Armed Police Forces and helped us perceive operational doctrine,” he remarks.
In line with the scholar entrepreneur, India’s geopolitical state of affairs has dramatically accelerated the adoption of UAVs. “A couple of years in the past, UAVs have been nice-to-have. Right this moment, they’re mission-critical, with each unit wanting dependable surveillance, strike functionality, and sooner response time—and drones are the one platforms that may ship all three at scale,” explains Khatri.
“For firms like ours, this shift has opened up a really actual alternative. The demand isn’t only for ‘a drone’, it’s for specialised techniques that resolve precise operational issues. That pushes us to innovate sooner and be extraordinarily sensible with our designs,” he says.
India’s UAV market—valued at $634 million in 2025—is forecasted to develop to $1.76 billion by 2034. Nonetheless, Khatri believes that solely critical engineering-led groups will survive.
Import dependency will change into much less acceptable, and most items need Indian firms that may ship world-class techniques rapidly. On this setting, the founder believes that being a pupil entrepreneur is now a bonus.
“Right this moment, for those who can ship working prototypes, folks don’t care whether or not you’re 19 or 29. In our case, at the same time as college students, Military items trusted us with actual initiatives as a result of we confirmed them working techniques, not PowerPoint displays. That’s the distinction,” Khatri says.
He provides that faculties are extra supportive than ever, and buyers are extra open-minded, making this a super second to construct as a pupil.
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Funding and the long run
Apollyon Dynamics raised Rs 4 crore in a pre-seed spherical led by Naandi Ventures in 2025. The startup is utilizing the funds for R&D and hiring. It plans to lift one other spherical subsequent yr to develop its manufacturing capabilities.
Vikas Katragadda, Co-founder of Naandi Ventures, says the VC determined to spend money on Apollyon Dynamics as a result of the founders confirmed the braveness to tackle deeptech challenges from India for the world.
“We’ve seen them (the founders) evolve from first-year hobbyists to entrepreneurs creating refined defence options. Their capacity to study quick, execute with self-discipline, and keep dedicated to a long-term imaginative and prescient is uncommon at this stage. Apollyon Dynamics displays every part Naandi stands for—ambition, character, and technical excellence,” says Katragadda.
Competing with gamers like Kadet Defence Programs, Khatri says Apollyon Dynamics stands other than the competitors by means of unmatched drone agility and high-speed jet-propelled techniques, which no different Indian startup is at the moment working.
“Our UAVs have proven zero customized aero failures, and we’re one of many few Indian firms engaged on jet-propelled goal drones. Our long-term imaginative and prescient is to determine Apollyon as a world defence exporter,” Khatri says.
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