Indian space startups aren’t just emulating what US and China have done — they seem to be making some novel progress of their own.
Bengaluru-based space-tech startup GalaxEye has announced that it has been granted a US patent covering the core technology behind its OptoSAR imaging system, a milestone the company says makes it the first Indian startup to receive a US patent specifically for satellite imaging technology.
In a post on social media, GalaxEye said the patent protects the invention that allows optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors to be aligned and synchronised so they can capture data of the same location at the same time, matched spatially and temporally. This addresses a problem that has long dogged Earth observation: optical and radar sensors have traditionally operated independently, with their outputs stitched together only afterward through post-processing, a workaround that introduces gaps, mismatches and delay. GalaxEye’s architecture instead fuses the two data streams at the system level, pairing the visual and spectral richness of optical imagery with SAR’s ability to see through clouds, smoke and darkness.
The company noted that the same foundational technology was already patented in India, and it is framing the US grant as validation that the invention travels — conceived, engineered and space-qualified in India, and now recognised in one of the world’s toughest patent jurisdictions. “This is an invention that came out of India,” GalaxEye founder and CEO Suyash Singh said, adding that the patent shows Indian deep-tech companies can build technology that is differentiated on a global stage, not just at home.
From a hyperloop team to orbit
GalaxEye was founded in 2021 by five IIT Madras alumni — Suyash Singh, Denil Chawda, Kishan Thakkar, Pranit Mehta and Rakshit Bhatt — who had previously worked together on Team Avishkar Hyperloop, an Indian entry in SpaceX’s global Hyperloop competition. Incubated at the IIT Madras Incubation Cell, the team set out to solve the cloud-and-darkness problem that limits pure optical Earth observation satellites.
The technology behind this week’s patent isn’t new to GalaxEye’s story — it’s the same sensor-fusion approach the company calls SyncFused OptoSAR, which it put into orbit for the first time in May aboard Mission Drishti, billed as the world’s first satellite to combine multispectral optical imaging and SAR on a single platform. At roughly 190 kg, Drishti was also India’s largest privately built Earth observation satellite at the time of its launch, following more than 500 aerial validation flights using drones, Cessna aircraft and high-altitude platforms, plus structural qualification testing at ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru.
GalaxEye has kept up the pace since then. In August, it acquired Bengaluru-based spacecraft engineering firm StarOps — a company with roots in TeamIndus’s lunar lander programme — to bring satellite-bus design, propulsion, avionics and systems engineering in-house rather than relying on external partners.
What’s next
With the US patent in hand, GalaxEye says it is strengthening its intellectual-property position as it works toward a planned constellation of 30 satellites over the next five years. The company says it already has a growing commercial pipeline spanning domestic and international customers, and expects the eventual network to serve defence and government agencies alongside commercial use cases in agriculture, infrastructure, insurance, maritime intelligence and disaster management — sectors where having both a clear optical picture and an all-weather radar view of the same spot, captured at the same moment, is the whole point.
GalaxEye’s advisory board includes representation from DRDO, ISRO, Waymo and Swiss Re, and the company has raised close to $19 million across nine funding rounds from investors including Speciale Invest, Mela Ventures, Rainmatter, Mounttech Growth Fund and Infosys. For a five-year-old startup that started out testing sensor fusion on drones, this week’s patent is the latest sign that its core bet — that no single sensor tells the whole story from orbit — has legs well beyond India.