How 5 IITians turned their college project into a satellite startup

Five IIT Madras students who first met while building a Hyperloop pod in college have now secured a US patent for GalaxEye's OptoSAR imaging system, five years later. The patent follows the May 3, 2026 launch of Mission Drishti and shows how a student project grew into a space-tech company.

In Short

• The founders first collaborated on Team Avishkar Hyperloop at IIT Madras
• GalaxEye was founded in May 2021 after the student hardware effort
• Drishti sensor testing began in 2022, followed by seed funding

Five engineering students met at IIT Madras to build a Hyperloop (a futuristic high-speed transport system that uses pods travelling through low-pressure tubes). They ended up building a satellite company.

That journey has now brought their startup, GalaxEye, another big milestone: a US patent. With this, it has become the first Indian startup to receive it for satellite imaging technology. The patent covers the system that allows its optical and radar sensors to work together and capture precisely matched images of the same location.

A patent gives an inventor or company exclusive rights over an invention, legally stopping others from using it commercially without permission. Winning that protection in the US matters more than winning it in India alone, since the US is the world's largest satellite-imaging and defense-tech market, and a US patent is what lets GalaxEye compete there without risking a rival copying its technology.

The five founders: Suyash Singh, Denil Chawda, Rakshit Bhatt, Kishan Thakkar and Pranit Mehta, had already learnt to build things together through Team Avishkar Hyperloop. They were part of the team that became the only Asian finalist at the SpaceX Hyperloop Competition in 2019.

Two years later, they started GalaxEye.

The startup's journey has also attracted attention from Forbes India, which featured GalaxEye in 2025 for its work on Mission Drishti and its effort to combine radar and optical imaging for clearer, all-weather views of Earth.

Today, the IIT Madras-founded startup is working on a different kind of engineering challenge: how to get a clearer picture of Earth, whether it is day or night, cloudy or clear.

That idea has taken them from student experiments and early prototypes to defence trials, an ISRO demonstration, a satellite in orbit, and now a US patent.

WHAT IS GALAXEYE?

GalaxEye was founded at IIT Madras in May 2021. The Bengaluru-based startup is working on Earth-observation technology, with its biggest idea being OptoSAR, combining optical and radar imaging on the same satellite.

Why does that matter?

Think of a normal camera. It can give us an image that is easy to understand, but clouds, darkness and weather can block what it sees.

Radar works differently. Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, can collect information even through clouds and at night, but its images can be harder to interpret.

GalaxEye's technology brings the two together.

Its first satellite, Mission Drishti, carries both types of sensors on one platform. The startup says this can provide more consistent, all-weather Earth imagery for applications including defence, agriculture, infrastructure and disaster management.

It has now secured a US patent for the technology that aligns and synchronises its optical and microwave sensors so they can capture spatially and temporally matched data. The same foundational technology has also been patented in India.

MEET THE FIVE IIT MADRAS ENGINEERS

The interesting part of GalaxEye is that its founders did not meet in a corporate boardroom.

They met while working on Team Avishkar Hyperloop, an IIT Madras student team.

Suyash Singh is the company's CEO and co-founder. He pursued a master's in Aerospace Engineering at IIT Madras and founded and led Team Avishkar Hyperloop. His LinkedIn profile also shows earlier experience in technology and entrepreneurship.

Denil Chawda is the CTO and co-founder. His work at GalaxEye focuses on the technical side of the company's systems, including signal processing and radar technology.

Rakshit Bhatt is the Vice President of Product and co-founder. His LinkedIn profile describes a long-standing fascination with space, something that eventually became part of his professional life.

Kishan Thakkar is the Vice President of Engineering and co-founder, while Pranit Mehta is the Vice President of Sales Operations and co-founder.

Pranit Mehta studied Engineering Design and Biomedical Engineering at IIT Madras. During college, he won the Best Student Entrepreneur on Campus award. His IIT years also included work on Avishkar Hyperloop and GalaxEye.

Rakshit Bhatt, along with Pranit Mehta and Kishan Thakkar, was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2025. Before this, fellow co-founders Suyash Singh and Denil Chawda had also featured on the list.

Together, the five brought different skills to the same table: engineering, product development, technology and business.

FROM A STUDENT TEAM TO A STARTUP

Their earlier Hyperloop experience was important.

Suyash's LinkedIn profile mentions how the team began with the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, struggled through design failures and funding challenges, and eventually became the only Asian team among the finalists in 2019.

That experience of designing, testing and building hardware together did not end with the competition.

It became the foundation for GalaxEye.

The company was formally founded in May 2021. By January 2022, it had started rail testing and early proof-of-concept work on its Drishti sensor.

By December 2022, the team had raised $3.5 million in seed funding and generated its first SAR image.

Then came a series of bigger tests.

THE GALAXEYE JOURNEY,

In February 2024, GalaxEye conducted Drishti sensor trials with the Indian Army's Northern Command.

In May, it built and demonstrated what it described as the world's first HAPS SAR sensor. The following month, the startup won the iDEX-DIO Challenge for satellite edge computing and closed a $10 million Series A funding round.

In December 2024, it completed its maiden space-tech demonstration on the ISRO POEM mission.

Six months later, in June 2025, the team captured what it described as India's longest and most detailed SAR image by drone.

And then came the moment the founders had been working towards.

On May 3, 2026, Mission Drishti launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. At around 190 kg, GalaxEye describes it as India's largest privately built Earth-observation satellite and the world's first OptoSAR imaging satellite.

The journey has now reached another milestone: a US patent.

IT STARTED WITH A COLLEGE PROJECT

GalaxEye's story is ultimately less about a satellite and more about what happened before it.

Five students found each other at IIT Madras, learnt to build hardware together, failed, tried again and carried that experience beyond campus.

The Hyperloop project ended. Their teamwork did not.

Five years after the space startup was founded, their student experiment has turned into a space company with a satellite in orbit, and technology now protected by a US patent.

For engineering students, that may be the most interesting part of the story: sometimes, the project you build in college is not the end of the journey.

It can be where the journey starts.

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