Growth Capital Remain Scarce in Spacetech: SatSure CEO Prateep Basu 

In a conversation with Outlook Business, Prateep Basu, co-founder and chief executive of SatSure, talks about the importance of commercial viability alongside national aspirations, the need for a workforce ready to meet industry demands and other critical aspects of India’s emerging space-tech ecosystem. 

SatSure is a space-tech startup which offers solutions in the Earth observation data and analytics segment. It has closed a Series A round of $15 million in equity capital and venture debut, led by Baring Private Equity Partners and Promus Ventures.

Capital has long been a challenge in deep-tech, especially space. Has funding access improved or does it remain a bottleneck? 
 
When it comes to access to capital in the space sector, early-stage product development support has improved to some extent. There are grants and programmes from bodies like Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), the Department of Science and Technology and other government initiatives that help start-ups get off the ground. 

However, the real challenge begins once a company moves beyond prototyping and enters the scaling phase. Growth capital required to build market traction, expand infrastructure and compete globally remains scarce, making it difficult for space-tech start-ups to sustain momentum and achieve commercial viability. 

What is the key factor for scaling space start-ups in India? 
 
In the space sector it is easy for entrepreneurs to get carried away by the beauty and complexity of the technology itself. But building a successful and sustainable business requires more than technical brilliance. It demands early exposure to the right kind of business mentorship. Without guidance on how to translate technology into commercially viable products and services, start-ups face the greatest risk of all: market risk. You could spend years developing something groundbreaking but if it does not align with customer needs or fails to find a paying market, the company risks collapsing despite having world-class technology. 

Thanks to experienced ISRO veterans, technical guidance is now more accessible. However, that alone is not enough to make space start-ups successful. What is still missing is a robust commercial mentorship ecosystem with role models and advisors who can help founders navigate market dynamics, build scalable business models and ensure their innovations translate into sustainable, commercially viable companies. 

Does India’s space talent pool match the US and China to lead globally? 
 
India certainly has talent but it is important to remember that space is not a purely domestic-focused industry. Any product or solution in this sector is highly capital-intensive in its early stages, which means the target market is global from day one. 

To succeed, we have to benchmark ourselves against talent pools in the US and Europe, where the private space sector has been active and mature for much longer. Compared to them, India’s talent pool is still in the process of evolving. It has grown significantly since we first started but there is still a pressing need to develop more workforce-ready professionals. 

By that I do not mean we lack smart or technically capable people. India has plenty of those. What we need are more individuals who are industry-ready, equipped with practical skills and able to contribute meaningfully from day one in a commercial space-tech environment. 

What role will SatSure play in the Pixxel-led consortium with Dhruva Space and PierSight? 

The winning consortium is now required to form a special purpose vehicle that will be responsible for asset building, satellite launches and overall operations. This structure is important because it creates the right incentives for private players to collaborate instead of competing in silos while also ensuring that India’s domestic needs are addressed more effectively. In this programme, IN-SPACe serves as the anchor driving the initiative. 

SatSure’s specific contribution will be in designing, building and operating satellites equipped to capture imagery in the visible (optical) and multispectral bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

What makes this initiative interesting is that IN-SPACe itself defined the configuration of the constellation specifying parameters like revisit frequency, meaning how often a particular location should be imaged within a given timeframe as well as the resolution requirements. Based on these specifications, companies had to evaluate their satellite platforms and imaging technologies whether multispectral, hyperspectral, synthetic aperture radar or others to determine how they could meet the technical needs. 

Have limited ISRO-only testing facilities hindered start-ups from building and scaling space-tech solutions? 
 
The key to overcoming this challenge is increasing capacity and that is exactly what IN-SPACe is doing. By setting up additional testing facilities, labs and infrastructure, entrepreneurs can save time and avoid the bottleneck of securing limited facility slots at ISRO. For any growing industry, expanding capacity is essential. With both the national space programme and the private sector on the rise, scaling infrastructure is the only way for them to thrive together. 

The encouraging part is that the government is funding these facilities itself rather than leaving it to individual startups. If each company had to build its own infrastructure, it would be prohibitively expensive and less attractive to investors. 

SatSure calls itself an ‘Earth Intelligence’ start-up. Why and what core solutions do you provide? 
 
When we call ourselves an ‘Earth Intelligent’ company it signifies that we are not limited to launching satellites and rockets but operate on the downstream side of the value chain, turning raw space data (such as satellite imagery, remote sensing data, positioning/navigation signals and so on) into actionable insights and products for end users. 

When we started SatSure in September 2017 the premise was simple: there was an explosion of data coming from space—especially satellite imagery—but not enough applications were being built to solve real-world problems. It was essentially a gap-identification exercise. 

My co-founders and I come from the space industry. We studied at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology and worked at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). We were already observing a global shift: the number of satellites being launched was increasing. But while most people celebrated the launches very few asked what happens after that. That curiosity led us to explore which real-world problems could actually be solved with space data. 

For example, when we look at climate change adaptation and building resiliency in critical infrastructure, satellite data offers powerful solutions.