India’s space startups are taking off. But can they scale?

NEW COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES

In June, the agency selected its first group of startups for funding under its Technology Adoption Fund (TAF) scheme.

Among them was Bengaluru-based SatSure, which uses satellite images of Earth to produce information for decision-making on agriculture, infrastructure, lending and insurance.

The Indian government is backing SatSure to develop Dhaarini, an Earth intelligence system powered by India-specific artificial intelligence capabilities.

SatSure co-founder and chief executive Prateep Basu described the project as a “backbone” for making sense of the huge volume and variety of satellite imagery being generated.

“You can simply interface like what you do on ChatGPT. You can interface over Dhaarini – tell me what happened on this particular piece of land and it will give you the answers,” said Basu.

Systems such as SatSure’s depend on a constant supply of reliable observations, creating another commercial opportunity for Indian companies building and operating satellites.

Another Bengaluru-based company, Pixxel, is building what it calls a “health monitor for the planet” using hyperspectral imaging satellites. The start-up is backed by Google.

The technology creates a detailed dataset using information captured across many different wavelengths of light.

“Since no one else was doing it commercially globally, we thought, okay, here’s a gap we can build and launch our own constellation of hyperspectral satellites,” said Pixxel founder and chief executive Awais Ahmed.

“That would be our entry point into being something that we can be the best in the world.”

In 2024, Pixxel was selected by NASA to supply commercial hyperspectral Earth-observation data for scientific research.

It now has six satellites in orbit and aims to launch up to 24 more over the next two years.

Pixxel and SatSure are also part of Allied Orbits, a four-company private consortium that plans to invest more than US$130 million in a 12-satellite Earth-observation network.

Backed by IN-SPACe, the goal is to collect data for a wide range of uses – from agriculture to climate change monitoring and disaster response.