Latest news with #ChaitanyaGiri
Mint
27-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
India's new space revenue driver: surveillance satellites
New Delhi: India's private space firms may be getting the revenue boost they hoped for: Thanks to geopolitical tensions, several countries have tapped them to build satellites as demand for space-based surveillance grows. Bengaluru-based Ananth Technologies, a long-time engineering partner for the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), has been executing an order from Australia for defence surveillance satellites over the past year. Peer Digantara is also part of this contract under the Mission for Australia-India's Technology, Research and Innovation or Maitri programme. Norway, Hungary and Poland, besides nations from West Asia and the global south, are also engaging with multiple Indian space firms, including Adani Defence and Aerospace-backed Alpha Design, according to at least five industry executives Mint spoke with. Most of these countries do not have their own satellite programmes, but changing geopolitical alignments and global tensions have amplified the need for space surveillance. And while revenue generated from such projects has still not reached hundreds of millions of dollars, India's friendly relations are offering local space startups an opportunity to drive growth through such partnerships. Moreover, surveillance satellite giants in the US, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, focus mostly on large contracts, according to Chaitanya Giri, space fellow at global think-tank, Observer Research Foundation. Since most of the contracts coming India's way range from $5-25 million per year, Giri said these 'are too small for the American behemoths, but cumulatively could add up to a significant boost for India". Satellite assembly line Ananth Technologies and Digantara will offer end-to-end design and manufacturing of satellites and provide surveillance data to Australia. While neither divulged the exact size of the deals, both said the multi-year pactsare leading to monetization of their business models in India. 'We have three satellite manufacturing and design engineering centres across Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram, where we build and design high-resolution surveillance, imaging and earth observation satellites based on requirements from clients," Subba Rao Pavuluri, chairman and managing director of Ananth Technologies, told Mint. The company has the reputation to back it, having manufactured surveillance satellites for India. These are in orbit and operated by Isro. In FY24, Ananth Technologies, incorporated in 1992, earned operating revenue of ₹270 crore, according to data from the ministry of corporate affairs. Digantara, incorporated six years ago, earned ₹3.2 crore and projects its revenue to increase to ₹250 crore by FY27 on surveillance satellite data and manufacturing contracts. Over ₹100 crore of Digantara's revenue growth is set to come from through its contract with India's ministry of defence, Mint reported on 13 June. Anirudh Sharma, chief executive of the Peak XV-backed startup, is also setting up the company's own satellite assembly line. Mint visited the company's headquarters in Bengaluru. The startup will offer satellite observation and data analytics services to paying customers. 'We're currently working with other clients, too, including the government of India as well as interested parties from the European Union," Sharma said. 'There is an increasing demand for sovereign surveillance capabilities around the world, for which we are offering white-label services to various governments." Surveillance as a service Beyond manufacturing for other nations, Indian space startups are looking to put their own surveillance satellites in orbit, and offer high-resolution surveillance data to countries. GalaxEye Space, a four-year-old, Chennai-headquartered startup, announced earlier this month that it will place its first, owned surveillance satellite in orbit as part of its business expansion plan. '...the current rise in interest for surveillance satellites is also boosting our case for innovation—where we are placing a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (Sar) satellite that can observe the earth at up to 0.5 metres resolution," said Suyash Singh, founder of GalaxEye. 'We're already having early-stage conversations with hundreds of clients, which is what spurred our decision to build this satellite. In the next six to eight months, we'll offer a revenue projection for the coming years, launch the satellite in orbit, and raise funds for our next phase of operations." The company's early-stage demand is largely coming from West Asia and the global south, Singh said. One year ago, the government of Australia signed an $18-million contract with Isro's commercial business unit, NewSpace India Limited (Nsil), to use its satellite launch services. Speaking with Mint on the sidelines of 2025 Indian Space Congress in New Delhi on Wednesday, Philip Green, high commissioner of Australia to India, said that space is an active area of collaboration between the two nations. 'We actively leverage the strength that each of us have in our nations to collaborate in various fields, including technology. In space, Australia is a global innovation leader—we bring this to India and tap its massive engineering talent pool with private firms that are highly skilled in niche areas. In turn, this helps both the geographies prosper and grow—Australia, leveraging this, is seeing its space economy already grow at 10% per annum," he said. 'With a strategic partner such as India, we can collaborate across the line and the ecosystem, and do so more intensively. That's where the India-Australia space collaborations are at the moment," Green said. ORF's Giri calls this a 'natural evolution". 'The US has moved on from manufacturing a long time ago, and Europe's markets are too expensive to manufacture at scale," he said. 'With the current geopolitical balances at play, India's biggest strength lies in leveraging this position to emerge as a default choice for global satellite manufacturing." Giri expects these contracts to help India's private space firms reinforce their reputation in the global market. 'With space and surveillance being seen as key areas of engineering and innovation, India is in a strong position to leverage its relations globally—and help private firms expand globally as critical infrastructure providers."
Mint
13-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Eye in the sky: India to set up satellites to spy on satellites
New Delhi: The defence ministry is in the process of finalizing a multi-year contract to set up a 'constellation of satellites" that will monitor other satellites that may be surveilling India, said three people aware of the development. The final project will be monitored by a team of technical experts, likely to be outsourced to a private space startup specializing in this field. The contract, worth ₹150 crore per year, will also involve India's very own network of spy satellites that are expected to be built and sent up by end-2026, they said. The 'satellite mapping' project will hinge on a network of satellites that will communicate with each other to relay data to stations on the ground. The network will be assembled entirely in India, and deployed entirely by end-2026, each of the three people cited above affirmed to Mint. 'This is one part of India's efforts to use its space prowess to bolster national security. The project in question will help preemptively detect space surveillance efforts against India, and will ramp up the capabilities that Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro's) Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis (Netra) initiative can already achieve," said one of the people cited above. Also read | Mint Primer: How do spy satellites work around the world? To be sure, Isro's Netra, announced five years ago, is largely centred around monitoring space debris and satellite positions—in a bid to help India plan indigenous space excursions. The new project, which the defence ministry is currently helming as per all the three people that Mint spoke with, will dedicatedly track surveillance efforts in space. 'This will be a small peg in a large, extensive system. It's important to note that India already had some satellite and ground telescope-based surveillance monitoring systems, through Isro. The new project will be a big boost to Digantara (a startup), and is definitely a good thing since it will bolster the use of space services in India's national security capabilities. But, how effective it will be, and to what extent it will differentiate India's ability, will remain to be seen only after the project becomes active," said Chaitanya Giri, space fellow at global think-tank and consultant, Observer Research Foundation. On 12 May, Mint reported that the ministry of defence and Department of Science and Technology had asked three private space entities to speed-up deployment of the Space-Based Surveillance (SBS)-3 project, which seeks to deploy a constellation of surveillance satellites in orbit. Read this | Isro satellites ensured safety, security of citizens; no Indian assets lost in Op Sindoor: Govt As part of this satellite mapping project, a control team is expected to work out of Bengaluru, and may even collaborate with Isro to synchronize their services, the second person cited above said. The person added that Bengaluru-based, Peak XV-backed startup Digantara has been awarded the contract. Queries mailed to the defence ministry and the startup did not elicit a response by press time. 'This is one of the biggest private space contracts that the Indian government has offered to a private space startup in India. The move reflects growing confidence in India's private space capabilities, and will eventually bolster confidence in domestic startups gaining contracts from around the world," the third person said. Digantara, in February this year, set-up an independent entity in Denver, US, to cater to space and defence contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and the US Department of Defense (DoD). The startup followed in the footsteps of fellow Bengaluru-origin satellite imagery startup, Pixxel, which set-up a US entity in Los Angeles. In September last year, it won a contract from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) for a satellite-based data acquisition project. Earlier, government officials had said that India's space promotions body, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (In-Space), was working to raise awareness within ministries to facilitate their usage of India's space startups. 'There is a considerable amount of awareness work being done at ministries. The government can and will be a key customer for space services, and in the near term, the effects of these contracts and tenders will be seen," said Pawan Kumar Goenka, chairman of In-Space. Goenka had commented in light of S. Somanath, former chairman of Isro, stating last year that the Centre was yet to emerge as a big customer of space services in order to successfully emulate the US model of operation. And read | India fast-tracks $3-billion spy satellite scheme following Operation Sindoor
