VyomIC is building a satellite constellation to replace GPS when losing signal isn’t an option
The Chennai-based company is developing low Earth orbit positioning and timing services aimed at drones, autonomous vehicles and infrastructure that needs centimetre accuracy.
Almost everything that moves autonomously depends on satellites more than 20,000 kilometres away. GPS and its equivalents were designed in the 1970s for military and then civilian use. They deliver position to within five to ten metres, updated once a second. For a person following a map is enough. But for a drone landing on a platform, five to ten metres isn't enough.
The signal is also weak by the time it reaches Earth, which makes it easy to jam or drown out. Jamming and spoofing have become routine; GPS fails indoors and in dense cities where signals bounce off buildings. And any country relying on a foreign constellation is relying on somebody else's infrastructure too.
VyomIC is building an alternative closer to the ground. Founded in Bengaluru in 2023 by Lokesh Kabdal, Vibhor Jain and Anurag Patil. Its plan is to build a positioning, navigation and timing constellation in low Earth orbit.
Closer, stronger, faster
Orbit is the central design choice. A satellite a few hundred kilometres up delivers a far stronger signal than one 20,000 kilometres away, and a stronger signal is harder to jam and easier to receive indoors. It also moves quickly across the sky, which helps a receiver work out its position faster.
Around that, the company describes atomic clocks, encrypted signals and AI-based processing, aimed at delivering centimetre-level accuracy rather than the metres GPS provides. It has also worked on real-time kinematic positioning, a technique that corrects satellite data using a reference station, engineered for machines moving through cluttered environments rather than surveyors standing still in open fields.
The founders came to the problem through a previous one. At IIT Madras, they led Avishkar Hyperloop, the student team that raised $1.25 million and built a 422-metre vacuum test tube. Afterwards, the startup ran drone swarm deployments for government users. It was flying those fleets that showed them where satellite navigation gave out.
The customers the company names follow directly from that experience: drones, unmanned ground vehicles, mining machinery, urban air mobility, and sectors such as finance and telecommunications that need precise timing rather than position.
Timing is the part most people never think about. Satellite navigation systems are, underneath, extremely accurate clocks, and financial exchanges, power grids and mobile networks all depend on that signal to keep themselves synchronised.
A constellation still to launch
VyomIC raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round announced in September 2025 and led by Speciale Invest, with BYT Capital also investing. The money is for developing the system rather than launching it.
India already has its own navigation system, NavIC, built by ISRO. The company positions itself as complementary rather than competing, arguing that the applications it's targeting need accuracy and update rates beyond what any current system offers.
In August 2026, the founders were among those from twenty Indian space startups who met the Prime Minister on National Space Day, alongside other companies.
However, it had not launched anything yet. Building a satellite constellation is among the most capital-intensive undertakings in the industry, and $1.6 million funds the engineering rather than the spacecraft. No satellite, customer or service is in operation, and the company has not published a
launch timeline.
(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)