Every drone flight — every mapping sortie, every surveillance sweep, every high-altitude delivery run — comes down to one invisible component: the propulsion system. The motors, controllers and propellers that turn battery power into thrust decide how long an aircraft stays up, how much it can carry, and how reliably it performs. For years, Indian drone makers have imported these critical subsystems. A Bengaluru startup has spent six years making sure they no longer have to. Nautical Wings Aerospace, based in Jakkur, Bangalore, calls itself India’s first electric propulsion technology company, and its hardware portfolio backs up the ambition: the company designs and manufactures electric propulsion systems for aircraft and UAVs, from motors and vertical-lift solutions to advanced composite structures.
The engineering runs deep across the stack. According to Inc42’s October 2026 coverage, Nautical Wings’ fixed-wing UAV propulsion configurations reach rotor sizes of up to 120 inches and power outputs of up to 150 kW — heavyweight numbers for a company founded in 2020. Its flagship product, the Integrated Electric Propulsion Unit (iEPU), is a plug-and-play turnkey propulsion system designed to drop straight into a drone manufacturer’s airframe, cutting the months of integration work that usually slow new platforms down. Alongside it, the company builds tailored propulsion for vertical-lift aircraft, precision motors and lightweight carbon-fibre components — several critical layers of aviation engineering under one roof.
The company’s technical credentials are on the public record. In June 2025, Nautical Wings unveiled its next-generation axial-flux UAV propulsion system at the Bharat Drone Stack conference at the Bengaluru International Exhibition Centre, with the platform formally launched by the Chief Scientist and Head of the UAV Division at CSIR-NAL alongside the President of the Drone Federation of India. The same year, the company’s Bharat Altitude Trials Expedition took its propulsion to Chang La in Ladakh — 17,388 feet above sea level — testing its systems in the thin, freezing air where military and surveillance drones actually operate. And in March 2026, the Indian Army’s 515 Army Base Workshop in Bengaluru signed an MoU with the startup, under which Nautical Wings lends its technical expertise to Army technicians in integrated propulsion systems, BLDC motor integration, propeller optimisation and composite fabrication techniques.
That military trust follows an earlier vote of confidence from India’s own drone industry: in January 2023, ideaForge — one of the world’s leading dual-use drone manufacturers — invested in Nautical Wings for its composite propeller technology. The startup has since raised a pre-Series A round led by Venture Catalysts and 1Crowd to accelerate R&D, and its roadmap looks up rather than sideways. The company says it has already developed 30–40 kW electric motors and plans to scale its architecture through 100 kW to 500 kW propulsion systems before tackling a 1 MW-class motor for future VTOL platforms — a power class that today belongs to a handful of global players.
Founded in 2020 by Shiv Rajput Singh Rajput, Praveen T and Vikas Kamath, the company has carried its hardware to the Dubai Airshow 2025, the Paris Air Show 2025 and the Drone International Expo in Delhi. Propulsion may be the least glamorous part of any aircraft, but it is also the part that decides who flies — and Nautical Wings is betting that India’s drones, and eventually its air taxis, will fly on motors designed and built in Bengaluru.
More Read
Keep reading: The Rocket That Returns: Inside OmSpace, the Ahmedabad Startup Building a Reusable Launcher on an Electric-Pump Engine · The Rocket That Lands Itself: Inside Space Philic, the Kanpur Startup Building a Reusable Rocket on Bio-Fuel · More Aerospace & Defense stories
Like stories like this? Add Exceptional Technology as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting in your search results and Discover feed.
