Vivek Vishwakarma01 Sep 2026
14:43IST
New Update
Kepler Aerospace, a Bengaluru-based space infrastructure and mission operations startup, has raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by Blue Ashva Capital and co-led by Finvolve India Accelerator and others.
The round marks the startup’s first external funding since its founding in 2018.
Founded in 2018 by Navneet Singh (CEO) and Kiran V. Sharma (Chief Strategy Officer), Kepler Aerospace is building an integrated space infrastructure stack spanning satellite systems, avionics, ground infrastructure, mission operations and intelligence delivery. The startup is focused on enabling reliable, secure and scalable space missions across strategic, defence and commercial applications.
Notably, it has secured two IDEX prime contracts to provide swarming ISR constellations to India’s defence space ecosystem, supported by approximately $4 million in grants under the IDEX programme.
Kepler Aerospace will use the raised capital for the launch of the first six swarming ISR satellites under the programme. The startup will also use the funding to scale its Mission Operations as a Service and Avionics as a Service verticals.
Navneet Singh, Founder and CEO, Kepler Aerospace, said, “The next generation of national security will increasingly depend on the ability to see, understand and respond faster. Space can provide that persistent layer of awareness, but it requires more than satellites; it requires the avionics, ground systems, mission operations and intelligence infrastructure to work as one integrated system.”
“This funding allows us to take the capabilities we have built over the last several years and deploy them at a meaningful scale. Our immediate focus is on executing our IDEX programmes, deploying our first six swarming ISR satellites and continuing to build the infrastructure required for persistent, low-latency intelligence.”
Satya Bansal, Founder, Blue Ashva Capital said, “Kepler is doing something no one else has done: building and demonstrating an autonomous swarming satellite architecture, where satellites talk to each other, task each other and act in orbit without waiting for a ground station. That collapses the intelligence cycle from days to minutes, and it changes what a country can see and decide for itself. This is a capability of sovereign importance. Navneet, Kiran, and their team have built space heritage and proven capability with their subsystems already in space. What they are building for India will matter just as much to the many countries that need sovereign eyes in space but do not have the expertise to build them. That is precisely the kind of innovation Blue Ashva exists to back.”
