Modern autonomous navigation, high-speed mobility, and critical infrastructure rely heavily on satellite positioning and timing. But conventional navigation systems such as GPS, Galileo, and NavIC transmit signals from medium Earth or geostationary orbits, tens of thousands of kilometres away.
These signals weaken before reaching the ground, making them vulnerable to atmospheric disturbances, electronic jamming, and spoofing.
Existing satellite navigation systems generally provide an average accuracy of around five metres. That margin of error is too wide for Level 2+ driver assistance systems, which handle functions such as steering and lane-centring, or for determining whether a vehicle is travelling on a highway or an adjacent service road.
Hyderabad-based Sanyark Space is developing satellite infrastructure designed to provide centimetre-level navigation accuracy alongside direct satellite-to-device communication.
The startup was incorporated in July 2025 by two former scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
CEO Raghava Kundrapu studied aerospace engineering at IIST and spent eight years at ISRO, contributing to 40 national missions. He later worked as a space technology consultant at Deloitte for three years. CTO Akhileshwar Reddy Peseke, an IIT Madras graduate, spent 13 years at ISRO developing navigation satellites.
With a team of 35, Sanyark Space is designing software-defined low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that operate at altitudes of 500 km to 1,000 km.
By operating roughly 20X closer to Earth than conventional navigation satellites, the company’s systems are designed to deliver signals up to 100X stronger, making them more resistant to ground-based jamming.
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