n a January morning last year, a Falcon 9 rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on a low Earth orbit mission. The payloads it was carrying included a surveillance satellite called SCOT, an acronym for Space Camera for Object Tracking, with the capability to track objects as tiny as 5 centimeters that was built by Bangalore-based Digantara Industries. The launch of what the company claimed was the world’s first commercial space surveillance satellite was hailed by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi as a milestone in a country that’s getting serious about space tech.

Fast forward to December, when the VC arm of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries led a $50 million series B funding round that valued Digantara at $200 million and increased the total funding it has received to $65 million. The firm’s cap table also includes other billionaires, commodities tycoon Kumar Birla and edtech entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala, both of whom invested in earlier rounds. The investors are flocking to get a piece of one of India’s hottest space-tech companies, which has evolved from offering the equivalent of a Google map for space to locate space debris into providing strategic intelligence services.

Led by its three cofounders, Anirudh Sharma, Rahul Rawat and Tanveer Ahmed, all alums of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list of 2025, Digantara is building a space surveillance system that can give early warnings of missile launches to countries across the globe. A network of satellites will be fitted with sensors to collect data about objects in space and paired with software analytics to provide intelligence about the movement and intent of those objects—crucial insights for governments to detect and respond to potential threats. “The world has realized that space domain awareness is 101 for space militarization,” says Sharma, 27, CEO of the firm, which was also featured on Forbes Asia’s 100 to Watch list of small companies and startups on the rise in 2024. “The timing of us starting this was pretty solid—right time, right place.

Our growth has been because of all the geopolitical instability we have seen, starting with the Russia-Ukraine war.” Satellite imagery, he notes, has helped shape military strategy.

Space will likely become a dangerous place, says the Center for Strategic and International Studies in its 2025 space threat assessment report. The American think tank wrote, “China and Russia, as well as, to a lesser degree, Iran and North Korea, are actively working to test new technologies and concepts of operations in space that have clear applicability and use for counterspace weapon capabilities.”

“The world has realized that space domain awareness is 101 for space militarization.”

“The world has realized that space domain awareness is 101 for space militarization.”

Globally, space-security budgets are being ramped up. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimates President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome, a space-based missile........

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