Decoding Xovian's Radio Frequency 'SOS' Tech For Ships, Aircraft Gone Dark

Rogue vessels breaching the green rules in forbidden waters, hijacked aircraft flying off the radar, cargo ships losing control in deep seas and sending out an SOS, a crash-landed aeroplane at a remote destination – satellite imaging often fails to track these vessels, ships and craft when they go dark. That’s when radio frequencies come to the rescue.

That’s precisely what happened when large fleets of Chinese fishing vessels turned off their automatic identification systems (AIS) when they swarmed the waters near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Galapagos Islands in 2020, posing great threat to the preserved marine ecosystem. HawkEye 360, a US-based defence tech company, detected their radio frequency signals and flagged the authorities in Ecuador.

“The real-time movement of assets like ships and aircraft can’t be tracked by imaging technology, but we can address this problem with the help of radio frequencies (RF),” Ankit Bhateja told Inc42.

He claimed that his Xovian Aerospace is the only Indian company trying to convert RF-based data into insights and integrating AI for analysis to make it usable for multiple sectors. In India’s bustling spacetech market that’s zooming at 26% to reach $77 Bn by 2030, Xovian races with startups like Agnikul, Dhruva Space and Belatrix Aerospace.

While most of the players in the radio frequency-based satellite space are focussed on a specific sector, Xovian claims to be building its product with a sector-agnostic approach.

With its AI-native RF satellites, the startup aims to assist organisations across maritime, aviation, logistics and defence space in locating their assets and determining the surrounding situation for smooth operations.

An Idea, From Classroom To Cosmos

Ankit Bhateja and Raghav Sharma set up Xovian Aerospace in 2019, but they came up with the idea back in 2014. Then fresh graduates, they formed Xovian Research Tech to provide space STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education to researchers and students across India.

Bhateja, coming from a computer science background, and Sharma, a chemical engineer, found their common passion in spacetech at a time when India’s private space ecosystem was yet to take off. “At that time, there was no policy, no regulation around the space sector. So, the only thing you could do as a business in the space sector is to do something in STEM education.”

They started helping students and researchers to build spacetech materials, including altitude balloons, sounding rockets and cansats. The cansats are miniature satellites – about the size of a soda can – used for educational and research purposes.

The founders said that Xovian Research Tech covered almost 24 states and brought together 18,000 people to learn the manufacturing of spacetech objects.

Xovian Research Tech became a part of a student satellite team from the University of Bengaluru in 2016. This team started developing a Low Earth Orbit satellite, which was launched in 2016 for imaging purposes. It stayed in space for 38 months and served two clients during that period.

The founders then hardly knew that it would drive them to launch Xovian Aerospace.

How Xovian Tackles ‘Dark’ Vessels

Images can help detect any change. For instance, to monitor any change on Earth’s surface, the satellites take images for seven to 10 days and then compare them to read the changes that occurred in this period.

The satellite images, however, often fail to detect the movement of a particular asset and the condition of its surroundings, where RF-based data insights can be a game-changer.

“We took satellite images to various industries to understand their demand and the kind of challenges we could solve. We got to know that the images were already available in the market, dominated by American and European companies,” Bhateja said.

In 2022, Xovian started building its RF satellite based on the same structure it used in the student satellite programme. While an imaging satellite includes a camera, an RF satellite runs on RF sensors.

The startup plans to upgrade the internal components and use a different payload, which essentially replaced the cameras with RF sensors, while keeping the outer structure of the satellite unchanged. Xovian also plans to use an upgraded processor in the satellite bus to adapt to its AI-based capabilities.

The company has tested the payload of its satellite on the ground and is going to launch it in space for testing by the end of this year, with the help of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launch vehicle.

The pilot launch with the RF sensors is expected around the second quarter of the next year, when the satellite will be launched in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The satellite will catch radio frequencies of a particular asset and send it to Xovian’s AI-led data intelligence platform, which will turn the data into insights and share it with the end-consumer.The startup also analyse variations in RF signals to detect weather and atmospheric changes. So far, three companies have promised collaboration in the pilots.

Xovian is confident that it will help companies track their assets, even if they go dark by turning off their AIS systems.

Business On The Horizon

Xovian Aerospace raised $2.5 Mn in a pre-seed funding round earlier this month, led by Piper Serica and Turbostart. The participants included Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) and Eaglewings Ventures.

It also received $300,000 as grants from the Department of Telecommunications, Department of Science and Technology and IIM Udaipur, which backed its hardware manufacturing.

The company is using the funds to launch its payload in space.

Amazon, too, strategically supported the company by providing it with cloud infrastructure to build its SaaS data intelligence platform.

Generating revenue in deeptech takes time. In order to stay afloat, Xovian has been selling parts of its hardware, such as antennas, space grade and connectors in the B2B enterprise segment.

In the defence space, the data security aspect in defence is complex, especially when serving multiple countries, and at a time when geopolitical tensions are on the rise. “That is why we are targeting the commercial non-defence sectors first. In case we pursue defence opportunities in future, we will ensure that the data is locally secured for each country we serve,” Bhateja said.

In the run-up to the pilot launch, the Xovian team is juggling three major aspects – finalising the designs for its satellite, building its software platform, and preparing for the payload launch.

Shooting For The Stars?

Indian spacetech startups saw a 35% on-year plunge in funding to $81 Mn in 2024, even as the number of deals increased from 11 to 14. The industry, which is capital-incentive, saw investors shying away because of delayed returns.

The journey of a spacetech startup is a long one. It took six years for Xovian Aerospace to prepare for the test launch of its payload by the end of this year, with an estimated pilot to start by the next year.

Digantara Aerospace took seven years to launch its first commercial space-to-space surveillance satellite early this year. For Agnikul Cosmos, the process of building the launchpad and mission control started in 2017 and it finally conducted the demonstrator mission in 2024.

From planning the payload launch to finalising the designs for its satellite and building its software platform, Xovian is aiming high. As the company juggles with so many things at the same time, the future looks foggy at times. “The spectrum will speak more clearly after the launch,” asserted Bhateja.

“We are doing both simultaneously. We have the expansion going on for our satellite team, while we are also readying the payload. Irrespective of the conclusion from the payload launch, we are going to put a satellite in Q3 or Q4 next year,” said the founder.

[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]

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