Exclusive: Naman Finance, SIDBI invest in spacetech startup Digantara

Spacetech startup Digantara has raised Rs 15.54 crore or $1.88 million in an extended Series A funding led by Naman Finance And Investment Private Limited an investment arm of Aditya Birla Group with the participation of SIDBI Venture Capital. 

The board at Digantara has passed special resolutions to issue 20 equity shares and 622 Series A1 compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of Rs 2,42,122 per share to raise Rs 15.54 crore, as per the company’s regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies.

Aditya Birla Group led the round with a Rs 8.3 crore investment, while SIDBI Venture Capital poured in the remaining amount.

As per startup intelligence platform TheKredible, Digantara has been valued at around Rs 590 crore or $71 million (post-money), which is roughly 2X of the valuation from the previous funding round. 

Post-allotment of the round, Aditya Birla Group acquired a 1.41% stake in the company while SIDBI Venture Capital holds 1.23% shares. For more details, visit here.

To date, Digantara has raised $14.4 million in funding across three rounds. In June 2023, it raised $10 million in a series A1 round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India) and Kalaari Capital. 

Founded in December 2018, Digantara is a space situational awareness company focused on enabling safe and sustainable space operations. It is building an infrastructure powered by a multi-modal data pool to support stakeholders across the value chain with accurate datasets and precise determination of orbital insights.

According to the company, inadequate tracking capabilities of objects in Earth’s orbit have left 96% of the 1 million objects that are currently in orbit untracked and these objects are large enough to cause damage to spacecraft but small enough to go undetected.

Last year, the company expanded to Singapore and also commenced the development of India’s first commercial SSA optical observatory in Uttarakhand. This observatory will play a crucial role in enhancing the nation’s space and SSA capabilities, according to the company. The firm also launched two missions that served as the space weather testbed.

For the fiscal year ending March 2023, the spacetech firm recorded Rs 2.37 lakh revenue from operations whereas its losses stood at Rs 3.54 crore.

Other startups in the space segment are Agnikul Cosmos, Skyroot Aerospace, Bellatrix, GlaxEye, Dhruva, SatSure, Vesta Space, and InspeCity.