When Jayant Khatri and Sourya Choudhury started in May 2025, the focus of the Hyderabad-based defencetech startup was building drones. Its early portfolio included trainer, endurance, multirole, and FPV systems, with the company selling drones worth more than Rs 1.5 crore last year.
But foresight prevails over immediate success. Anticipating saturation in the market, Apollyon has now pivoted.
“We have stopped building regular drones. Instead, we have completely shifted towards making higher value products,” says Khatri, Co-founder and CEO of Apollyon Dynamics.
The founder says the conventional drone market had become too crowded, with limited room for differentiation. “It’s basically a race to the bottom now. People are just assembling stuff. That included us as well. There’s not a lot of value addition,” he says.
The startup’s current portfolio has been rebuilt around three core products: Nightshade, Ahuti Mk II, and Project Piranha.
Apollyon now has around 20 full-time employees, two manufacturing labs, and an office in Hyderabad.
Khatri says Nightshade is a jet-powered platform that can be configured as a target drone, decoy, or loitering munition. The company has already conducted multiple tests. “We were the first company in India to launch it from top of a car, a jet-powered system,” he says.
The startup plans to begin supplying pilot batches of the target-drone variant to the Indian Army by December, while trials of the loitering-munition version are expected to begin next year.
Nightshade's three configurations are designed for different battlefield roles. The target-drone variant is intended to simulate threats during air-defence training, while its decoys can help identify enemy radar positions.
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