Garuda Aerospace reportedly raises $10 million pre-IPO at a $320 million valuation

Chennai drone maker Garuda Aerospace has reportedly raised about $10 million (roughly ₹96 crore) in a pre-IPO funding round at a pre-money valuation of $320 million, as it moves towards a stock market listing planned for the first quarter of 2027. The deal, first reported by The Economic Times around 6-7 October 2026 citing people aware of the transaction, would make Garuda one of the first pure-play drone companies to approach India's public markets.

The round

According to the reports, the round was led by the Motherson family office and Dubai-based Aditum Investment Group. Garuda has not publicly commented on the transaction, so the figures should be treated as reported rather than confirmed by the company.

The valuation marks a step up from earlier rounds: Garuda was valued at about $250 million in April 2025, according to CB Insights data, and around $260 million in an extension later that year.

The road to listing

Garuda has been preparing for an IPO for some time:

• In April 2026, it filed a confidential draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Reports at the time said it was targeting an issue of about ₹1,000 crore, including a fresh issue of up to ₹750 crore.
• It carried out a stock split, reducing face value from ₹10 to ₹2 per share — a common step ahead of listing.
• On 5 August 2026, it received SEBI's observations on the draft, clearing it to proceed.

The confidential pre-filing route, introduced by SEBI in recent years, lets companies get regulatory feedback without making sensitive details public until they are closer to launching the offer.

What Garuda does

Founded in 2015 by Agnishwar Jayaprakash, who remains founder and CEO, Garuda Aerospace builds drones for agriculture, defence, logistics and surveillance. Agricultural drones for spraying and crop monitoring are one of its best-known product lines, in a segment where government programmes promoting drone use by farmers and self-help groups have created a sizeable domestic market.

The company has been expanding its defence work. In September 2026, a team from the Indian Army's Army Design Bureau reviewed Garuda's manufacturing and R&D facilities in Chennai, reflecting the military's growing interest in sourcing drones from domestic manufacturers.

Pre-IPO rounds and what they signal

Pre-IPO placements serve two purposes. They raise capital ahead of the listing, and they set a reference valuation that bankers use when pricing the public offer. Earlier reports had suggested Garuda was looking at a valuation in the range of ₹4,000-5,000 crore around its listing, although sources differ on whether that refers to the IPO price or a post-listing figure. The reported $320 million pre-money valuation in this round gives a more concrete marker of where private investors are pricing the company today.

Why it matters

India's drone sector has grown rapidly since the government liberalised drone rules in 2021, banned most drone imports in 2022 and introduced a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for drones and components. Operation Sindoor in 2025 and conflicts elsewhere have since underlined how central unmanned systems have become to modern militaries, pushing the armed forces to place more orders with Indian firms.

A Garuda listing would give public investors a new way to back that trend, joining ideaForge, which listed in 2023, as one of the few dedicated drone manufacturers on Indian exchanges. It would also test how public markets value drone makers whose revenue mixes agricultural, commercial and defence business — each with very different margins and order cycles.

For the wider deep-tech ecosystem, a successful IPO would show that hardware companies can reach liquidity at home, which matters for the venture investors deciding whether to fund the next generation of Indian drone, robotics and aerospace start-ups.

The key questions for investors will be the sustainability of Garuda's order book, its dependence on government programmes, and how much of its technology — airframes, flight controllers, propulsion and payloads — is developed in-house as defence buyers increasingly demand indigenous content.

Sources

• https://dealroom.co/news/160496-garuda-aerospace-raises-10m-pre-ipo-round-ahead-of-2027-listing/
• https://www.kotakneo.com/news/ipos/garuda-aerospace-secures-pre-ipo-funding-ahead-of-its-proposed-2027-ipo/
• https://www.precize.in/unlistedsharesnews/garuda-aerospace-raises-10-mn-pre-ipo-funding-at-320-mn-valuation
• https://techstartups.com/2026/10/07/startup-funding-news-today-october-7-2026-nous-research-monid-multiply-labs-quanfluence-more
• https://indianstartupnews.com/news/garuda-aerospace-files-confidential-ipo-papers-with-sebi-targets-rs-1000-crore-issue-11449106