Ex-ISRO Engineers' OXG Space Raises ₹17 Crore to Build 'Edge Cell Towers' in Orbit

Earth-observation satellites are getting better at seeing. Getting what they see to the people who need it, quickly, is still a bottleneck. Bengaluru-based OXG Space, founded by two former ISRO engineers, has raised ₹17 crore to build what it calls "edge cell towers in orbit". The idea is to relay, process and fuse satellite imagery in space so that users receive answers, not raw data, in near-real time.

The round

Aum Ventures led the round through its India Innovation Fund II, according to Entrackr, Entrepreneur India and Indian Startup Times. The fund is still raising money and is targeting ₹750 crore. Several space-industry founders also joined the round: Pawan Kumar Chandana and Bharath Daka, the co-founders of Skyroot Aerospace, and Dr Chiran Phanindra, founder of the orbital-servicing start-up Cosmoserve.

OXG Space was started by Akash Shetty and Sanjay Gorur, both formerly of ISRO. Having two of the founders of India's first private orbital launch company as backers gives the start-up early credibility in a sector where trust in hardware matters as much as the business plan.

The problem OXG wants to solve

A typical Earth-observation satellite captures an image, stores it, and waits until it passes over a ground station to download it. The data is then processed on the ground before an analyst or an algorithm turns it into something useful. SiliconIndia's report on the round notes that this gap between observation and insight can run to several hours.

For many applications, such as disaster response, maritime monitoring, border surveillance and crop-stress alerts, a delay of hours can make the information much less useful. OXG's answer is an orbital network that combines 5G non-terrestrial-network-inspired connectivity with in-orbit computing. Imaging satellites would connect to OXG's spacecraft much as phones connect to a mobile tower. Their data would be relayed, processed and fused in space, and the results sent to the ground.

Mission Synapse

The new capital funds Mission Synapse, a 12-month programme to demonstrate the core technologies in orbit. According to Entrepreneur India, SMEStreet and SiliconIndia, it covers three pieces of hardware:

• A Ka-band phased-array antenna, aiming for an initial 1 Gbps-class link. The company's longer-term roadmap targets 64 Gbps per spacecraft.
• A deployable mesh reflector for the link to the ground.
• A scalable deployable solar array to power the computing and communications payloads.

Each of these is a hard engineering problem in its own right. Electronically steered phased arrays, large deployable reflectors and high-power arrays are typically the domain of much larger satellite manufacturers. Demonstrating them on a start-up budget would be a meaningful technical milestone.

How it fits India's space economy

OXG is part of a growing group of Indian start-ups betting that computing in orbit will become core infrastructure. TakeMe2Space is building its MOI series of orbital computing satellites, while imaging companies such as Pixxel and GalaxEye, which plans 30 satellites over five years, are adding capacity that will need faster delivery pipelines. Investor appetite is there too: Inc42 reported that spacetech start-ups raised about $130 million in the July–September 2026 quarter, roughly 45 per cent of all Indian deeptech funding in that period.

If OXG's approach works, it could help Indian imaging operators compete on speed of delivery, not just resolution and price. It could also give government users, from disaster agencies to the armed forces, faster access to space-based intelligence over Indian territory and the wider Indian Ocean region.

What to watch

The milestones to track are a launch slot for the Mission Synapse hardware, whether the first link reaches its 1 Gbps target, and whether OXG signs early customers among Indian imaging constellations. At ₹17 crore, the round is modest by global standards. It is enough to show whether a team of former ISRO engineers can turn an ambitious architecture into working hardware in orbit.

Sources

• Entrackr: https://entrackr.com/snippets/aum-ventures-leads-rs-17-cr-round-in-oxg-space-12674360
• Entrepreneur India: https://india.entrepreneur.com/business-news/aum-ventures-leads-inr-17-cr-round-in-oxg-space
• Indian Startup Times: https://www.indianstartuptimes.com/investment/aum-ventures-leads-%E2%82%B917-crore-round-in-oxg-space-to-build-edge-cell-towers-in-orbit/
• SMEStreet: https://smestreet.in/technology/aum-ventures-backs-oxg-spaces-in-orbit-computing-technology-12677470
• SiliconIndia: https://www.siliconindia.com/startup/startup-funding/oxg-space-raises-rs-17-crore-led-by-aum-ventures-nwid-55654.html
• Local Samosa: https://www.localsamosa.com/news/aum-ventures-leads-crores-round-in-oxg-space-12675935
• Inc42 (Q3 deeptech funding): https://inc42.com/buzz/deeptech-funding-zooms-2-8x-yoy-in-q3-despite-tighter-deal-flow/
• Business Standard (GalaxEye plans): https://www.business-standard.com/companies/start-ups/with-us-patented-tech-galaxeye-plans-to-launch-30-satellites-in-5-years-126100200755_1.html