Going Global: Dhruva Space Hops On To Space Marketplace Satsearch As A Member

India’s private space technology company, Dhruva Space, recently joined the Satsearch membership programme, thereby putting itself out there on the global space marketplace.

Satsearch is an “Amazon for the space industry”, according to its co-founder and chief executive officer Kartik Kumar.

The company is building a global marketplace for the space industry to open it up to everybody. Using their platform, organisations around the world can buy and sell space products and services.

It’s a new-age way to connect space industry suppliers with customers at a time when the old-school means of conferences and exhibitions are becoming outdated in an increasingly digital and globalised world.

The Satsearch network has more than 1,500 suppliers and over 25,000 monthly active users.

“We are very pleased to announce that India-based full-stack space engineering solutions provider @DhruvaSpace has joined the @satsearchco membership program,” Satsearch said in a tweet.

“Happy to welcome Dhruva Space to satsearch as our latest member,” Satsearch chief operating officer (COO) Narayan Prasad tweeted.

“Thank you Team satsearch for this space to showcase our portfolio of products and services to build, launch and operate #Satellites,” Dhruva Space said on LinkedIn.

Dhruva Space is focused on building full-stack space engineering solutions, meaning they can offer end-to-end space services across the build, launch, and operate segments.

They can build satellite platforms and subsystems, facilitate space launches, and offer ground station solutions.

The award-winning startup, based out of Hyderabad, India, and Graz, Austria, tested and space-qualified its satellite orbital deployer (DSOD-1U) and its 0.5U cubesat in July last year, setting the stage to build satellites for their clients as well as to launch their own.

Dhruva then launched Thybolt 1 and 2 amateur radio (ham radio) communication nanosatellites on the next polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) mission, C54, on 26 November 2022. 

By the start of February, just over a week ago, the satellites had achieved the milestone of 1,000 orbits in space.

Dhruva Space has 14 products up on the Satsearch marketplace now, including space-grade solar arrays, satellite buses, the cubesat platform and deployers, a hybrid connectivity module for satellite applications, ground station solutions, and an integrated space operations and command suite.

Last year, Satsearch helped users from 670 different organisations in their trade studies for space missions.

Prasad describes Satsearch as the world's largest supply chain platform for the space industry. It is used in more than 100 countries spanning six continents. The platform is said to have “helped suppliers with procurement opportunities over €500m (500 million euros).”

Born out of a hackathon in 2015, Satsearch was incubated between 2018 and 2020 in the European Space Agency's Business Incubation Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where it is based.

Besides Dhruva Space, Bengaluru-based Accord Software & Systems Private Limited and Madhapur (Telangana)-based Azista BST Aerospace are members with Satsearch.

Accord is a business in the micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) category with offerings in the areas of GNSS technology, real-time embedded systems, and avionics. Azista is a space (satellite) manufacturer with over two and a half decades of experience.

Satsearch has 180 India-based suppliers listed on its network.

The global space economy will touch the $1 trillion mark in the coming years, former Indian Space Research Organisation chief A S Kiran Kumar said on 7 February in an address to Karnavati University in Gujarat.

Total budgetary allocation to the Department of Space for the coming year is nearly Rs 12,544 crore.

The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-Space) — the government's single-window body to work with the private space sector — received Rs 95 crore allocation.