In a league of its own: This Ahmedabad space tech startup is working on persistent oceanic surveillance
Ahmedabad-based space tech startup PierSight is building satellites equipped with both SAR and AIS sensors, making it the only commercial company in the world to do so.
Vinit Bansal and Gaurav Seth met in 2019 when their respective companies, National Instruments and Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO, collaborated on a project. In subsequent meetings, they noticed multiple gaps in the tracking of oceanic activities.
“If an ocean were a country, it would have been the world’s seventh-largest economy. Yet, there is still no way to effectively monitor what goes in these water bodies,” says Seth.
To explore those subaquatic blind spots, the duo co-founded in 2023—a space tech company developing indigenous satellites to monitor maritime operations and flag illegal proceedings. Seth serves as the company’s CEO, while Bansal looks after the tech vertical as the CTO.
The co-founder duo had realised that the current Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems—a radar imaging system that uses microwave signals to create high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface in difficult weather conditions—were not equipped for day and night surveillance as they were developed for specific regional requirements.
“We came forward with a solution of creating SAR that uses less power and doesn’t cost much. So, we could deploy a constellation of SAR satellites that would work together and effectively monitor the oceans persistently,” Seth tells YourStory.
Bansal adds, “We wanted to separate ourselves from the few companies globally that are working on SARs. Since most SAR satellites aren’t used for persistent ocean surveillance, we decided to build a sensor that would allow us to do just that.”
The Ahmedabad-based startup has a 50-member team, with a few working out of Bengaluru. While not formally incubated by IN-SPACe, the company uses its technical centre to develop its products.
Building groundbreaking tech
PierSight has built its versions of SAR, as well as Automatic Identification System (AIS)—a tracking system used by maritime vessels to identify and locate other vessels—through advanced AI/ML models.
“SAR can see through dense clouds at night, and AIS makes it mandatory for ships to broadcast their live locations containing parameters like their position and direction. It can be picked up by satellites in space. In simple terms, SAR is like eyes in space, and AIS, the ears,” explains Seth.
The co-founders had spent a decade working for their respective companies, where they built or dealt with such satellites themselves, which boosted their confidence to make their own.
Most satellites, outside of the Spanish government’s PAZ (Spanish for ‘peace’), don’t have SAR and AIS together, and companies have to use two separate satellites to fetch data, which affects the accuracy.
To combat the limitations, PierSight’s satellites have both technologies—a first of its kind and a key requirement to detect illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
“We have brought both the sensors on the same platform so we can find out whether a particular ship is working on illegal activity, for instance. If a vessel is visible in a radar image but it isn’t in the AIS messages, that usually means something illicit is happening,” explains Bansal.
There are varied uses for this technology—from detecting oil spills to real-time monitoring of exclusive economic zones. PierSight tested both technologies through a CubeSat, launched with the help of ISRO on December 30, 2024.
“We launched it on a PSLV on ISRO’s POEM platform. We tested a unique technology, which is the secret sauce of our business, called software-defined radio and radar module. It’s a single module that does radar and all ground communications from our satellite to the ground station,” Bansal says. The team also tested its radio frequency front ends—responsible for receiving and processing incoming RF signals.
The co-founders say they plan on launching PierSight’s first satellite towards the end of 2026.
A global clientele in the Indian sector
The business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) startup has already amassed around 15 clients ranging from private bodies to coast guards of India and the US, among other countries.
In 2024, PierSight also won the INDUS-X challenge—a collaboration between India and the US to foster defence innovation—for detecting oil spills. It was also one of the finalists of the NSIN-NGA Global Fishing Forecast Challenge in the same year, where it won a cash prize of $25,000.
“In order to validate our SAR processing technology, we started by testing it on a drone. Now, we are seeing that as a separate market altogether. We are now building the same sensors for drone-based platforms,” shares Seth.
With this, PierSight is targeting the mining sector. A satellite can’t monitor a mine from all angles, but a flexible platform like a drone can—which the company is calling its DroneSAR program. At present, an undisclosed client of PierSight is using its SAR technology to monitor mines.
“Any kind of subsidence on the mines can lead to a complete halt in its operations, and mining operations revenue per day is in several millions of dollars. So, having the technology to prevent such huge economic losses provides significant value,” says Seth.
Bansal adds that the technology specifically helps in determining the prognostics of tailing dams, as the failure of those leads to a mine subsiding.
Talking about the significant contribution of IN-SPACe in the development of the space tech sector in India, Seth says, “We are seeing all sorts of interesting companies coming from various states. It is encouraging more and more Indian companies to start manufacturing, and we are looking forward to working with several of them.”
Funding
In January 2024, PierSight raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Alpha Wave and Elevation Capital for R&D operations.
Elevation Capital, through a LinkedIn post, said, “In time, we believe PierSight will revolutionise the existing Earth observation stack by delivering SAR-based, all-weather, high-frequency alternatives to commercial customers and governments.”
Competing with global space tech companies like the Espoo-based ICEYE and the California-based Capella Space, the Ahmedabad startup separates itself with its technology.
When asked about competitors, Bansal says PierSight is “in a category of its own”. “We’re pretty much the only commercial company providing persistent surveillance through both weather imaging sensors like SAR and AIS… In that sense, we have no competitors.”
Edited by Suman Singh