Digantara, an India-based space situational awareness (SSA) company, announced Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in a Series A1 funding round to further develop its revolutionary Space-Mission Assurance Platform (Space-MAP).

The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India) with participation from Kalaari Capital, Digantara said in a statement.

According to the firm, this round also includes participation from Global Brain, a Japan-based venture capital firm, Campus Fund, and the founders of IIFL Wealth.

The company had also raised a seed round of $2.5 million from Kalaari Capital in 2021.

According to the statement, the fresh infusion of capital will allow Digantara to deploy the first phase of its space-based surveillance satellite constellation.

The capital will also allow the company to accelerate the development of its downstream SSA service with the aim to offer them in a comprehensive manner by the second quarter of 2024.

Digantara said that inadequate tracking capabilities of objects in earth’s orbit has left 96 percent of the 1 million objects that are currently in orbit untracked; these objects are large enough to cause damage to spacecraft but small enough to go undetected.

With space becoming more congested and contested, it opined that there is a pressing need for an infrastructure layer that enables safer space operations.

Digantara said it intends to enable sustainable and safer space operations by building a comprehensive infrastructure powered by its multi-modal data pool.

“We will invest heavily in launching our space tech infrastructure to track previously unobservable objects and significantly increase data points,” said Anirudh Sharma, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Digantara.

According to him, this will empower stakeholders with comprehensive insights for efficient decision-making in an increasingly complex space environment.

“We are immensely grateful to have the support and unwavering belief of world-class investors who share our vision,

“Their backing is a testament to the transformative potential of our mission to make space sustainable,” he added.

Over the years Digantara has solidified its position as a leading global space company. It has recently expanded to Singapore.

As part of its infrastructural endeavours, Digantara has commenced the development of India’s first commercial SSA optical observatory in Uttarakhand.

This observatory will play a crucial role in enhancing the nation’s space and SSA capabilities.

The firm also recently launched two missions that served as the space weather testbed.

Digantara is steadfast in its commitment to empowering governments, organisations, and satellite operators with cutting-edge solutions.

“The team at Digantara is working towards creating the most advanced SSA data collection infrastructure,

“We believes that this will lead to significant capability in the life cycle of managing satellites, which is a rapidly growing market,” said Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Peak XV Partners.

Digantara is a SSA company developing an end-to-end solution to address the difficulties of space operations and situational awareness through its pioneering Space – Mission Assurance Platform a.k.a.Space – MAP.

Space-MAP will serve as a one stop solution for all space operations supporting stakeholders across the space value chain and life cycle of a spacecraft mission.

This platform will be as powerful and sophisticated as Google Maps, serving as a foundational layer for space operations and astrodynamics research.

Digantara is founded by Anirudh Sharma, Rahul Rawat, and Tanveer Ahmed who have previously built cutting-edge satellites and ground stations during their undergraduate studies while delivering satellite subsystems to space agencies.

Spread across Bengaluru and Singapore, Digantara is a 30-member team of largely engineers who have masters and doctorates from premier global universities.

Their areas of expertise include astrodynamics, photonics, and space weather.

The team is also backed by advisors who each have more than three decades of expertise in the domain.

Indian spacetech startup Pixxel nets $25M Series A funding led by Radical Ventures