Raphael ThysCo-founder and CEO Suyash Singh concedes that it will take another couple of years for the space tech industry to reach the level the drone industry is at today
Chinese researchers said that more than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed so far. (Representational image)
Chinese researchers said that more than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed so far. (Representational image)
Space tech startup GalaxyEye Space wants to provide businesses and government agencies datasets that will help them in applications ranging from disaster management to mineral exploration.
The Chennai-based company, which has patented a multispectral camera, is pitching itself as a competitor to drone companies that offer similar services.
Founded in 2020, the IIT Madras-incubated startup last year patented Drishti, a camera that fuses multiple sensors to produce accurate imagery. With the technology integrated on a satellite, it is aiming to disrupt the earth observation industry by building unique datasets.
These datasets have applications in detecting changes in various kinds of infrastructure, tackling natural disasters and so on.
“For instance, it can detect the progress of a construction, monitor flooding or a forest fire. There are also applications in detecting traffic densities in ports and so on,” Co-founder and CEO Suyash Singh said.
The startup, which operates out of IIT-Madras and has a presence in Bengaluru, is putting together its own satellite, which it plans to launch by the end of 2023.
Last year, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round. It is in talks with investors for raising another round of funding for the satellite development.
On competing with the drone industry, Singh says that although the capital expenditure involved in satellites is expensive, operational expense are far lower. Drones also confront logistical difficulties in terms of requiring multiple batteries, having a dedicated operational team and so on.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Singh spoke about the prospects of space tech in India. Edited excerpts:
What does GalaxyEye Space do and where does it stand out?
There are three kinds of satellites — communication satellites, navigation-based satellites and imaging. So we fall in the imaging satellite domain.
Ours is a one-stop solution for satellite imagery. A camera always gives you information in colour. For example, if I have to identify something like a car or an aeroplane, the colours will help me identify those.
But the colour won’t tell us about the geometrical feature of that object. That is done by radars. With our multi-spectral Drishti sensor, we are building a comprehensive dataset so that you have colour, geometry -- everything in one.
For example, you’ll be able to see a building in an image, and understand its height too.
As opposed to?
What happens today is that if you get image data from someone, you still have to get another set of data from someone else. And then somebody else. And even if you get all the datasets into one box, another set of challenges is how do you process them? Because everything has been on a different platform. Our computing unit on the satellite processes data on the satellite itself.
Basically, it will be really helpful for intelligence officers, defence, and disaster monitoring. So they don't have to download the data, process it at their end, and then find insights. Rather, you get insights directly.
Don’t drones also provide similar services?
Yeah, very valid. However, the point is when you go for a drone, there are a number of challenges. Number one is the battery charge. So you can only map (imagery) up to a certain geography, you know, you can't imagine beyond it.
If you have like 20,000 square kilometres or similar large volume requirements, it gets difficult. Plus, second, you know, when you fly a drone every day, if you're doing change detection every day, you need a dedicated operational team and on the field to ensure that they are in the same area, that the flight trajectory is the same and so on.
Otherwise, processing the images can be a problem.
So mechanically, adding a satellite becomes a very logical choice, because it is always orbiting around the earth. You will not need a drone pilot, or an operation team on the ground to do that.
But wouldn’t it be more expensive to hire satellite services than, say, a drone?
It is the other way round. Drones are much more expensive than getting a satellite. Of course, satellites are expensive in terms of capital expenditure, but operational expenditure is less than what drones entail.
So if you are having a satellite in orbit for 10 years, automatically, or, you know, it naturally becomes cheaper than drones.
Can you expand on that?
Let’s say you need to map 1,000 square kilometres with a drone. First of all, you need to have a dedicated team for like 30-40 days. Apart from that, multiple batteries and the maintenance cost of the drones will also be necessary. Plus, flying permissions and travelling costs.
However, satellites, it's a one-time cost. Now say you're mapping that 1,000 kilometres. It would take two days maximum and you can also use that satellite for mapping other parts of the world.
If satellites are as beneficial as you say, why is the government going towards drone service providers for mapping or imaging projects?
I think, as a country, we are ready for drones, to be honest. As a country, we are not yet ready for satellites. So it's still a couple of years from now, when we will have more people coming up with satellite companies and launching satellites every month, every three months, every four months.
Today, only ISRO {Indian Space Research Organisation} launches satellites. And they launch a satellite every year, like one satellite, whereas if you go to the US, it's like every week.
What is a commercial player like GalaxyEye looking from the government to boost this sector?
I think the government has been really generous. They have started to give us the facilities of ISRO. We can go inside, and test a few things. So I think the government has been doing their part.
But why we have not gotten to that stage is because, when a new thing starts, an ecosystem around it comes up very slowly and gradually.
So, if you see, you know, the various components that things like drones use can be produced by anyone.
However, when it comes to space, you need to have different kind of electronic components because the space environment is very different.
Your phone will not work in space because there is radiation...
So engineering and that kind of supply chain is still not available to a large extent.
So how is GalaxyEye going about these difficulties?
So GalaxyEye is basically taking help from what ISRO has already done. We're tapping into their supply chain, configuring that into the strategy that we want.
ISRO takes a different strategy. Their systems will never fail. That's how they proceed, right? Our systems are like, we can have slight chances to fail, but we want to make it at an extremely cheaper cost. So you know, those tradeoffs we have to make.
So are you saying that tapping into ISRO's supply chain, in the long run, wouldn't be very viable?
It will be. So currently, the ISRO supply chain is for ISRO. But the supply chain has to be configured to the private industry as well. It's not completely ready right now.
I think it takes an amount of effort and, you know, time that we have to work with them, to tell us that this is what we want. And their machines are big, and their scale is huge. But our scale is much smaller. So those kinds of things have to be configured.
Since your satellite is still in the developmental phase, what are you doing right now?
Right now what we're doing is flying an aircraft and putting the sensors on the aircraft and mapping a few regions. It's slightly expensive, but the data is very valid.
Since your business model is data-as-a-service, what about data privacy?
The government has fixed a certain resolution where human beings cannot be recognised. And when it comes to some areas such as national borders and other things, we can't operate without government permission.