India has made major strides in the field of space exploration after ISRO’s history making conquests. The Space agency’s story of success has cultivated a market for space technology, which led to the birth of startups like VestaSpace. And the company has now found capital for furthering its vision, through a $10Mn capital raise from Next Capital.
Founded in 2018 by space engineer Arun Kumar Sureban, VestaSpace brings satellite solutions for small and medium scale companies, and provides them the opportunity to access small satellites, satellite communication, sensors, and connected devices.
The company plans to use these funds in expansion of its growth, both in India and global markets. Sureban is optimistic about the company’s future, and predicts that the investment will help VestaSpace to scale up its operations by 300%. This growth will be achieved by acquiring new ground station for geo based satellites and development of Geo satellites for broadcasting.
This is the company’s first investment since its inception, as it had been operating with a $3 million seed funding that Sureban’s drone software accrued.
The company builds CubeSat and nanosatellite projects, which are like normal satellites but smaller, and operate exclusively in low orbit of Earth, providing help in remote sensing or communications. The company’s first CubeSat satellite was developed recently, in March 2020, which took two satellites into Earth’s orbit. The company says,”CubeSat and nanosatellites has spurred the growth of the utilization of small satellites for industrial application,” adding that, “At VestaSpace, we build application-agnostic Small Satellite platforms.” VestaSpace says that its goal is to “offer Small Satellite/s coupled with Earth Station/s and Launch Service as an integrated solution or individually, as a technology solution for our prospective customers.”
VestaSpace recently added mission analysis and design as its newest offering. It said in a linkedin post, “It (their newest offering) essentially is the analysis of satellite orbits to determine how best to achieve the objectives of a space mission. This is an end-to-end solution right from the defintion, development and preparation phases of each project. We design satellites, recommend modifications, and simulations are done for the same too.”
VestaSpace is already working with ISRO, which had recently announced incubators for Space technology startups based in India.
