Startups with altitude

Strap: From missile tracking satellites to electric air taxis, Bangalore startups prove Karnataka’s policy push is taking flight

Blurb:

Digantara and Sarla Aviation capture what Karnataka’s startup policy is betting on – deep-tech ambition, patient capital, and globally competitive outcomes

Byline: Ravi Kiran

As Karnataka rolls out its most ambitious startup blueprint yet, two Bengaluru-born ventures are already proving what the new policy wants to make possible; thinking big, building deep and aiming far beyond familiar horizons.

The Karnataka Startup Policy 2025–2030, approved by the cabinet in November, sets an aggressive target – 25,000 startups in five years, including 10,000 outside Bangalore, backed by a Rs 518.27 crore budget outlay. The policy promises a full-stack push, funding, incubation, infrastructure, mentorship, acceleration, R&D and industry collaboration, to strengthen the state’s innovation pipeline.

While the policy sketches the roadmap, companies like Digantara and Sarla Aviation are already racing ahead, turning Bangalore’s startup story into one that stretches from orbital space to vertical flight.

From space junk to missile tracking

Digantara began by watching what most people never see, debris hurtling through space. As satellite launches multiply and low Earth orbit grows crowded, space traffic and debris monitoring has emerged as a critical segment of the global space economy. Digantara carved out its niche here, tracking fast-moving objects in orbit.

Now, it is pushing that expertise into a far more sensitive domain – missile tracking from space. “We were tracking fast-moving space objects. So, with that experience and lessons that we learnt there, we will use the same architecture to work on missile tracking and detection from space,” Anirudh Sharma, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told a news agency.

The city-based startup operates SCOT, a commercial space-surveillance satellite launched in January 2025. It plans to place 15 more satellites into orbit during 2026–27 to scale up its monitoring capabilities.

Alongside this, Digantara will launch two Albatross satellites dedicated to early missile warning and precision tracking, and roll out Skygate, an expanding network of ground-based sensors that enable persistent observation across critical theatres of operation.

All of this feeds into AIRA, Digantara’s integrated space-and-ground infrastructure that combines hardware, data and processing systems to deliver near real-time detection, characterisation and interpretation of emerging threats.

Digantara has also gone global. The startup has begun operations in the United States, focusing on building larger, 100-kg class satellites tailored to American defence requirements. Sharma said a dedicated office in Colorado Springs was essential to even qualify for contracts from the US Department of Defence.

Last week, Digantara announced it had raised USD 50 million to fuel this next phase, a signal that Bengaluru’s space startups are no longer content with watching the skies, but shaping geopolitics from above them.

Building air taxis, one test at a time

If Digantara’s eyes are fixed on orbit, Sarla Aviation is focused on the airspace just above city streets.

The aerospace startup, which plans to roll out electric air taxis by 2028, has begun ground testing its programme at its Bangalore manufacturing facility, a major step that moves the project from digital simulations and lab experiments into real aircraft-scale validation.

The company unveiled its prototype air taxi, Shunya, at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo earlier this year. Now, it has commenced testing of its half-scale eVTOL demonstrator, SYLLA SYL-X1, which boasts a 7.5-metre wingspan. Sarla Aviation says this is the largest and most advanced private eVTOL demonstrator currently under development in India.

Crucially, SYL-X1 is not an academic prototype or a remote-controlled experiment. It has been designed with certification intent from the outset, forming a direct bridge to Sarla Aviation’s planned 15-metre wingspan full-scale aircraft.

Founded in October 2023 by Adrian Schmidt, Rakesh Gaonkar and Shivam Chauhan, Sarla Aviation has raised USD 13 million across Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A rounds. Its investors include Accel, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath. This year, the company also brought former civil aviation secretary Rajiv Bansal on board as advisor.

“Our focus has never been on being first, but on building to last,” said Gaonkar, the company’s co-founder and CTO. “We are building a platform that can be certified, produced, and safely operated, designed and owned entirely in India.”

The challenge, the company says, goes far beyond aircraft design — navigating India’s emerging aerospace supply chain, building a certification-aligned flight-test ecosystem, and delivering helicopter-class endurance while cutting cost and complexity through electric propulsion.

Together, Digantara and Sarla Aviation capture what Karnataka’s startup policy is betting on – deep-tech ambition, patient capital, and globally competitive outcomes. One is building surveillance architectures that watch the world from space. The other is quietly assembling the future of urban mobility on a Bangalore test floor.