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IIT Madras-incubated space tech start-up GalaxEye Space has announced the first close of its current fund-raising round, raising $6.5 million led by Mela Ventures and Speciale Invest.
The round also saw participation from a clutch of investors including ideaForge, with additional investments from Rainmatter, Navam Capital, Faad Capital and Anicut Capital.
The funds raised will be deployed to launch GalaxEye’s first satellite, the “Drishti Mission,” and further develop their multi-sensor payload technology.
“The funds will be utilised majorly to build a satellite and complete the first mission. We are now pretty confident to go to space, and most of the part of the fund will be deployed into will be deployed to put first satellite into the orbit and and also get a bunch of really experienced folks to build a satellite,” said Suyash Singh, Co-Founder and CEO at GalaxEye Space.
Founded in 2020 by Singh, Denil Chawda, Kishan Thakkar, Pranit Mehta and Rakshit Bhatt, GalaxEye Space leverages optical multi-spectral imagery and synthetic aperture radar sensors to deliver data, aimed at sectors like defence, surveillance, agriculture, insurance and aquaculture.
The Bengaluru-based company raised $3.5 million seed round led by Speciale Invest, and a clutch of investors including Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath and EaseMyTrip CEO Prashant Pitti.
On the company’s monetisation plans, Singh said there are four key verticals -defense, disasters, insurance, and agriculture.
“Satellite imagery is one key product that we are eyeing from which is the core of company. But defence certainly is one of the largest customers that we’re going to look at in the future,” said Singh.
The company has also tied up with companies such as Ideaforge for drones and other industry partners for satellite launches, including satellite platform systems, satellite assembly and testing, and launch segments.
“GalaxEye Space is entering the space backed by the success of 300+ flights with UAV SAR payload. We were looking for a strong partner at this stage to enable the smooth journey and can’t think of better partners,” he said.
According to recent data from Tracxn, India’s space technology sector received $126 million in funding in 2023, marking a 7 per cent increase from the $118 million raised in 2022, and a staggering 235 per cent rise from $37.6 million in 2021.
Notably, early-stage investments dominate this growth, with early-stage rounds attracting $120 million of the total $126 million in 2023, up 5 per cent from $114 million in 2022. In 2024, early-stage funding has already reached $8.5 million to date. Additionally, seed-stage funding saw a 24 per cent increase, climbing to $5.3 million in 2023 from $4.3 million in the previous year.
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