Surat-based defence drone manufacturer InsideFPV has delivered 100 indigenous FPV kamikaze drones to the Indian Army within 60 days, marking a significant step in India’s push to indigenise combat drone capability on its northern borders.
The company, founded in 2020 by Arth Chowdhary, Deyvant Bhardwaj, and Oshi Kumari, was established in direct response to the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, which exposed India’s heavy dependence on imported drone systems for frontier operations. InsideFPV pivoted from its initial consumer and education drone business to prioritise defence contracts, designing FPV (first-person-view) systems engineered specifically for India’s harshest deployment environments.
The kamikaze drones exceed 250 km/h and are built to operate reliably in temperatures as low as minus-35 degrees Celsius, a critical requirement for sustained operations in high-altitude Himalayan regions and winter border deployments. The systems are designed as plug-and-fly platforms, requiring minimal pilot training so that frontline soldiers can deploy them with basic instruction.
This delivery follows InsideFPV’s execution of a Rs 10 crore Ministry of Defence contract in April 2026, which included supply of FPV drones and training for over 300 personnel. The company has also won the Indian Army’s Him Dron-a-thon, a high-altitude drone competition, further validating its engineering capabilities in demanding field conditions.
InsideFPV’s product line extends beyond kamikaze variants to include GPS-denied interceptor systems, addressing a critical operational gap where adversarial electronic warfare or GPS spoofing would render conventional navigation systems unreliable. These platforms represent a shift toward combat-ready systems designed for real operational conditions rather than controlled test environments, a philosophy that underpins the company’s competitive positioning against cheaper imported alternatives.
The company, which has raised approximately $1.8 million in funding including Rs 6 crore in January 2026, operates under a defence-focused business model while maintaining a parallel consumer and education line through drone labs and pilot training kits. Investors include GVFL, Mumbai Angels, Inflection Point Ventures, Soonicorn Ventures, and DLabs.
India’s Defence Ministry has increasingly emphasised domestic drone manufacturing as part of its broader Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives. The rapid procurement cycle and integration of InsideFPV systems by the Army reflects growing institutional confidence in indigenous alternatives that can meet operational reliability standards at substantially lower cost than imported systems.
The 60-day delivery cycle underscores the company’s manufacturing scalability, critical for the Indian armed forces’ ambition to transition from dozens of imported systems to thousands of domestically produced combat drones across multiple frontiers.