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development of autonomous ships and submarines for the Indian Navy.The round also saw participation from Sameer Brij Verma, formerly at Nexus Venture Partners, and Sandeep Singhal, cofounder, WestBridge Capital. Other investors include Industrial47 and Singularity AMC, along with a group of founder-operators, family offices, and the company's founders.Founded by naval architect Maitrai Maka, Rekise Marine develops autonomous surface and underwater vessels through a full-stack approach spanning vessel design, systems integration, and autonomy software. Maka, who has spent over a decade working on marine robotic systems, co-founded the company with Rear Admiral Shekhar Mital (Retd), former chairman and managing director of Goa Shipyard Limited, and former director general of the Submarine Design Group. Mital oversees shipbuilding partnerships and programme governance."Naval power has historically been concentrated in a few large capital platforms. Ships and submarines are expensive, take years to build, and require highly trained crews," Maka told ET. "Navies around the world are now investing heavily in autonomous systems and moving towards smaller, fully unmanned platforms driven by autonomy and AI."According to Maka, autonomous fleets can be deployed at scale and produced much faster than conventional naval assets. "If you send out a thousand platforms and even if 900 are destroyed, the mission can still succeed if the remaining platforms achieve the objective," he said.Maka also believes autonomous maritime systems will become increasingly important as nations seek sovereign control over critical defence technologies."Underwater remains one of the few places where platforms can stay hidden, especially as low-earth orbit satellites become more common. At the same time, operating autonomously at sea for weeks or months is one of the hardest engineering problems because the platform has to be completely self-sufficient," he said.The startup aims to combine India's shipbuilding capabilities with world-class engineering talent and build sovereign autonomy technologies. Rekise currently has four products either deployed or undergoing trials. These include Jaldoot, an autonomous surface vessel delivered to DRDO through Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), and Swadheen, an autonomous survey vessel that completed sea trials in the Bay of Bengal earlier this year.Its underwater portfolio includes a man-portable autonomous underwater vehicle designed for mine countermeasure missions and Jalkapi, the company's flagship autonomous submarine currently under construction.Maka said the company expects field activities for Jalkapi to begin later this year.One of Rekise's differentiators is its common software architecture, which powers platforms ranging from 50-kilogram underwater vehicles to 20-tonne autonomous submarines measuring nearly 12 metres in length."The same software stack can be deployed across multiple platforms. That allows us to iterate quickly and adapt capabilities based on Navy requirements," he said.The company currently employs 55 people across Bengaluru, Goa, and Kolkata, with plans to significantly expand hiring across robotics, AI, embedded systems, naval architecture, and sea operations.The funding comes amid growing investor interest in defence and deeptech startups as India pushes for greater indigenisation in strategic sectors and expands its maritime ambitions under its long-term national security and economic plans.The fresh capital will be used to expand engineering talent and advance the development and testing of Jalkapi, the company's extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (XLUUV) being developed under the Indian Navy's iDEX ADITI programme.