Awais Ahmad, co-founder of the Indian geospatial technology startup Pixxel, is excited for the New Year. His startup is finally set to launch the first of its planned low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, after multiple delays due to operational issues and a variety of other factors.
Similarly, GalaxEye, another startup developing its own satellite constellation, has stated that the first member of its 15-satellite constellation will be launched in early 2023. Back on the ground, the geospatial survey company Genesys International recently announced a plan to create high resolution 3D maps of 100 Indian cities by the middle of 2023.
The growth of Indian companies looking to offer a variety of data, analytics, and services while developing products as they go follows the Indian government’s decision to liberalise access to geospatial and remote sensing data in February 2021.
Geospatial data is a collection of information that pinpoints location information on Earth and is used for a wide range of purposes, including agriculture analysis, forestry information, mining, consumer-grade maps, and more.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) stated in a statement on 15 February that “data that is readily available throughout the world does not need to be regulated.”
Suyash Singh, co-founder and CEO of GalaxEye, explained how liberalised policies have aided the potential of businesses in geospatial data, “One of our clients works with a dam management authority. They (the latter) do not want to dabble in satellite imagery, but want end-actionable inputs based on analytics — on how to manage water harvesting and other areas. So, they approached our client who will be sourcing satellite imagery from us, applying their own analytics tools on the data, and serving the end results to the dam management authority.”
Both Pixxel and GalaxEye declined to reveal the names of their clients, but both claimed to have signed pre-launch clients in India and international markets.
According to Ahmad of Pixxel, the demand for hyperspectral imagery satellites is much higher in international markets. Singh, on the other hand, claims that his company has already signed letters of intent (LoIs) with a number of data vendors and satellite analytics resellers.
