Rekise Marine raises $9.7M Series A led by Accel and NKSquared
What's the deal? Bengaluru-based deftech startup Rekise Marine has raised $9.7 million in a Series A round led by Accel and NKSquaredDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the investment firm of entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath. The company builds autonomous surface and underwater vessels for the Indian Navy.
The round also drew participation from Sameer Brij Verma, formerly at Nexus Venture Partners, Sandeep Singhal of WestBridge CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Industrial47Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Singularity AMCDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and a group of founder-operators and family offices.
Founded by naval architect Maitrai Maka and Rear Admiral Shekhar Mital (Retd), former chairman of Goa Shipyard Limited, Rekise Marine takes a full-stack approach — spanning vessel design, systems integration, and autonomy software — to build unmanned maritime platforms.
The funding will go towards expanding engineering talent and advancing Jalkapi, the company's flagship extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle, currently under construction. Field activities for Jalkapi are expected to begin later this year.
Why now? Navies worldwide are shifting towards smaller, unmanned platforms driven by autonomy and AI. "Ships and submarines are expensive, take years to build, and require highly trained crews," Maka told the Economic Times. Autonomous fleets, by contrast, can be deployed at scale and produced far faster.
India is also pushing for greater indigenisation of defence technology, fuelling investor interest in deeptech startups. Rekise aims to combine India's shipbuilding capabilities with sovereign autonomy technologies.
What could go wrong? Building autonomous systems that operate at sea for weeks or months is an extraordinarily hard engineering problem — each platform must be entirely self-sufficient. Defence procurement cycles are notoriously long, and converting trials into production contracts with the Indian Navy is never guaranteed.
The signal: Accel's co-lead signals growing mainstream VC appetite for defence deeptech in India, a segment historically dominated by government procurement and strategic investors. With multiple products already in trials or delivered to bodies such as DRDO, Rekise Marine is unusually advanced for an early-stage startup — reducing the execution risk that typically deters venture capital from hardware-heavy defence plays.
Read more: economictimes.indiatimes.com
