Indian firm Kepler raises $8 million to build swarm satellites

Indian space tech company Kepler Aerospace has raised USD 8 million in a seed round led by Blue Ashva Capital and co-led by Finvolve India Accelerator and other investors.  

The company is focused on enabling reliable, secure and scalable space missions across strategic, defence and commercial applications, with a focus on persistent, low-latency intelligence from space, according to a report by Businessline.

“This isn’t just a funding milestone. It accelerates our mission to build the world’s first autonomous swarming satellite constellation for ISR, for the Indian Defence Space Agency, as part of our iDEX Prime contracts,” Kepler Aerospace said in a post on LinkedIn. “Our first constellation will comprise six satellites equipped with electro-optical, thermal and electronic-warfare sensors — designed to communicate, coordinate and autonomously respond as one intelligent system.”

iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) is an Indian government platform that funds and accelerates space-tech innovation by partnering with commercial startups, MSMEs and academic innovators.

“This funding allows us to take the capabilities we have built over the last several years and deploy them at a meaningful scale,” Navneet Singh, Founder and CEO, Kepler Aerospace, said, according to a report by Fortune India. “Our immediate focus is on executing our iDEX programmes, deploying our first six swarming ISR satellites and continuing to build the infrastructure required for persistent, low-latency intelligence.”