Peak XV Partners on Tuesday said it has led a $10 million Series A round of funding in space startup Digantara, its first investment announcement after separating from Sequoia Capital.
The transaction also marks the debut into the space technology sector for Peak XV, which has more than 50 unicorn startups in its portfolio.
Bengaluru-based Digantara, which had raised $2.5 million seed funding from Kalaari Capital in July 2021, was looking for a Series A funding round, Mint reported on 4 January. Kalaari participated in the Series A round as well, Digantara and Peak XV said on Tuesday.
To be sure, while this is the first funding announcement under the Peak XV name, the term sheet for the funding round was signed much before the corporate restructuring was announced.
Digantara will use the money to build its commercial space situational awareness satellites as part of its infrastructure. The company is building what is essentially a map of all objects in space, which it seeks to offer to space-faring organizations globally, as a data on demand service. In the long run, once its service is fully operational, it will work as a traffic roadmap for satellites in various orbits.
Anirudh Sharma, chief executive of Digantara, said the company is also seeking to expand its team and set up a new office in Bengaluru.
“Alongside expanding the team, the entire funding round will be used in building and deploying the first batch of our space situational awareness (SSA) satellites, which will have eight satellites in total. We’ll launch the first one some time this year, followed by the remaining seven within 12 months of the first commercial satellite launch. With this, we aim to commence commercial satellite awareness data operations after April next year,” Sharma said in an interview.
He added that the company won’t need all eight of its own satellites to commence commercial operations. “Having our own SSA infrastructure will give us more independence operationally, but we already source satellite data from government-backed space agencies and commercial firms that already have satellites in space. This is akin to how Google sources traffic data for Maps, which gives us a vast amount of space data to analyze, track and offer to clients,” Sharma said.
Digantara is currently working with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) to source satellite data, among others. As clients, it is demonstrating its space analytics services to government and defence agencies of Singapore and the UK, Sharma said.
Shailesh Lakhani, managing director of Peak XV Partners, said in a release that SSA is “a rapidly growing market”, adding the product “will lead to significant capability in the life cycle of managing satellites.”
Digantara’s latest round underscores an increasing number of international investors leading funding rounds in domestic space-tech firms.
On 1 June, Google made its first space-tech investment in India as it joined a $36 million Series B funding round of homegrown satellite imagery and data analytics startup, Pixxel. Canada’s Radical Ventures also led Pixxel’s Series A round in March last year, while rocket-maker Skyroot Aerospace raised $50.5 million in its Series B round in September last year, from Singapore’s GIC.