The defense minister stood on the deck that March afternoon, watching a sleek vessel navigate the waters off India's coast with no one at the helm. For Maitrai Maka, the naval architect who co-founded Rekise Marine nearly a decade ago, the demonstration at the Sagar Sankalp conclave represented something larger than a showcase: validation that autonomous marine systems—long the province of wealthier navies—could be engineered, tested, and delivered from Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Now, the startup has secured the capital to prove it at scale. Rekise Marine closed a $9.7 million seed round on June 12, 2026, co-led by Accel and NKSquared, the investment vehicle of Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath. The syndicate included Sameer Brij Verma, formerly a partner at Nexus Venture Partners; Sandeep Singhal of WestBridge Capital; and a handful of family offices alongside firms like Industrial47 and Singularity AMC.
The timing reflects a broader shift. In 2025, India's defense-tech sector raised $247 million—more than double the prior year, according to data from Tracxn. By late spring, deeptech funding overall was already tracking at roughly 80% of the previous year's total, with investors writing larger checks to earlier-stage companies.
What sets Rekise apart, perhaps, is its ambition to build not just one platform but an entire fleet of autonomous systems spanning drastically different scales—from portable underwater drones to 20-tonne submarines. It's a bet that the future of naval operations lies in modular autonomy software that can be threaded across vessel classes.
Building in Layers
Founded in 2017 and based in Hyderabad, Rekise develops everything from man-portable autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to what the company calls "extra-large" submarines. The centerpiece of its portfolio is Jalkapi, an 11-meter autonomous underwater vehicle designed for 45-day missions—no small feat in a domain where endurance and stealth define capability.
The startup has already notched a few milestones. It delivered Jaldoot, an unmanned surface vessel, to DRDO's Naval Science & Technological Laboratory through Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers. Earlier this year, it completed fully autonomous open-sea trials of Swadheen, another survey vessel, in the Bay of Bengal. A smaller, portable AUV is currently in trials.
The fresh capital will fund final assembly and sea trials of Jalkapi, accelerate development of Rekise's in-house autonomy stack, and expand hiring across robotics, AI and machine learning, embedded systems, and naval architecture. As of June 2026, Rekise was actively hiring robotics control systems engineers at its Bengaluru operations, where much of the software development happens.
Rekise partners with two major defense shipyards—Goa Shipyard Limited and Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers—for systems integration and production, an approach that blends startup agility with established manufacturing infrastructure.
A Naval Architect and an Admiral
The founding team offers a window into the dual demands of defense hardware. Maka, the CEO, brings a naval architect's eye for design and engineering. His co-founder, Rear Admiral Shekhar Mital, previously served as Chairman and Managing Director of Goa Shipyard Limited, a role he took up in early 2014. It's the sort of pairing that makes sense on paper—technical innovation married to operational fluency in military procurement—but harder to execute in practice.
Defense startups occupy a peculiar space: they must navigate long sales cycles, stringent certification requirements, and the opacity of government contracting, all while racing to prove technology that incumbents have been refining for decades. Rekise's participation in showcases like Swavlamban 2025 and the March demonstration for India's defense leadership suggest the company has learned to work the circuit.
Whether that translates to sustained production contracts—and the kind of recurring revenue that makes venture investors comfortable—remains an open question. For now, the bet is that India's push toward self-reliance in defense manufacturing, coupled with growing interest in unmanned systems globally, will create room for a homegrown player with technical chops and naval credibility.
The next test, quite literally, will be at sea.
