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The Context: Earth Needs Space
We are at a pivotal moment in human progress – where space is no longer just a domain of exploration, but a powerful frontier for solving our planet’s most pressing challenges. The real disruption isn’t happening miles above us; it’s in the intelligence we extract from orbit to inform decisions on Earth. From climate change to food security, from urban resilience to defence, the convergence of satellite technology, edge computing, and AI is reshaping how we see and respond to the world around us.
Space is not the destination. It’s the leverage.
This transformation is unfolding against the backdrop of a surging global space economy, projected to nearly triple in value from $630 billion in 2023 to $1.8 trillion by 2035. Within this expansion, satellite imaging and data services are commanding growing importance—not only for conventional use cases like mapping and weather, but for high-impact, real-time applications that demand both speed and precision.
Introducing SatLeo Labs
SatLeo Labs is building a full-stack space-tech company specializing in high-resolution thermal and multispectral satellite imagery, delivered through a proprietary microsatellite constellation and processed in real-time via onboard edge AI from Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Real-Time Thermal Insights
SatLeo’s microsatellite constellation provides daily, high-resolution thermal and multispectral data, enabling rapid detection of heat anomalies in agriculture, environmental conservation, climate-resilient urban planning, and strategic defence - vital for time-sensitive decisions.
Dual-Band Infrared Payloads
SatLeo Labs integrates advanced MWIR (Mid-wave) and LWIR (Long-wave) sensor hardware into its microsatellite payloads, enabling high-sensitivity thermal imaging fused with multispectral imaging across diverse conditions. MWIR modules deliver refined resolution for long-range observations, while LWIR sensors ensure consistent performance through fog, smoke, and humidity – making the system resilient and mission-ready across climate zones and use cases.
Democratized Thermal Imaging
SatLeo disrupts the traditional Earth Observation systems with high-resolution thermal and multispectral data at potentially half the cost. By offering accessible data infrastructure, SatLeo unlocks scalable applications in urban heat mapping, crop stress detection, and security monitoring – enabling broader adoption across public and private sectors.
Verticalized SaaS for Scalable Monetization
SatLeo offers industry-specific analytics via a cloud platform that combines edge-collected data with AI/ML pipelines. From irrigation optimization to industrial inspections and defence surveillance, the platform’s modular SaaS layers allow recurring, high-margin revenue streams that will be industry ready without the need for customers to build in-house expertise to process the data independently.
The Opportunity: A Market at Inflection
The space economy is undergoing a paradigm shift. No longer confined to government agencies, satellite technology is becoming modular, affordable, and indispensable. The global Earth Observation (EO) data is projected to exceed $700 billion by 2030, but the real value lies in vertical applications—precision agriculture, urban & environmental resilience, and defence surveillance. SatLeo’s focus on high-resolution thermal imagery addresses a critical gap: most satellites today either lack thermal capabilities, suffer from latency that renders data obsolete by the time it reaches decision-makers, or tackle data processing challenges.
India’s space sector, long defined by public sector leadership, is now entering a dynamic phase of privatization. With ISRO’s commercial arms actively collaborating with private players and policy shifts opening access to launch and testing infrastructure, India is becoming a launchpad, both literally and economically for the next generation of space-tech innovators.
Growth Drivers
- Global Food Supply: With the world’s population expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, thermal imaging plays a crucial role in ensuring global food security. By utilizing thermal data, farmers can detect crop water stress, monitor irrigation needs, and identify diseases or pathogens early. Thermal imagery also helps in yield prediction and assessing crop maturity, making it an essential tool for sustaining food production in the face of rising temperatures that could impact grain yield by 20%-25%.
- Defense & Intelligence: Limited night vision capabilities make global borders vulnerable, but thermal imaging provides the solution by offering reliable surveillance at night or in low-visibility conditions. This helps border security agencies to monitor and protect national boundaries effectively, enhancing defense operations.
- Climate Resilience at Scale: Between 2000 and 2019, climate change cost the world approximately $16 million per hour. Thermal imaging can provide data-driven insights to support climate risk mitigation strategies. By identifying heat anomalies and tracking environmental changes, thermal imagery aids in resource allocation for green technologies, making it a vital tool in the fight against global warming and the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future.
- AI & Edge Computing Integration: AI and edge computing are revolutionizing satellite data processing, reducing latency and enabling faster decision-making. This boosts various real-time applications while cutting data transmission costs.
Competitive Landscape
The Earth Observation (EO) market is shifting from periodic, low-resolution imagery to high-frequency, high-resolution intelligence. Once dominated by large satellites and centralized data processing, the industry is now driven by nimble constellations, faster revisit cycles, and tailored data offerings across spectral bands – optical, radar, hyperspectral, and increasingly, thermal. This evolution is unlocking new use cases across sectors like agriculture, defence, disaster response, and climate monitoring.
Onboard AI in Satellites
A growing segment of the EO market is moving beyond satellite imagery as a commodity to deliver actionable intelligence through onboard processing. Rather than waiting for raw data to be transmitted and processed on the ground, a small but emerging class of providers is embedding AI directly into satellites. This allows in-orbit data filtering, compression, and early-stage analysis, reducing latency, transmission costs, and reliance on ground infrastructure. This edge capability is especially valuable in time-sensitive scenarios – natural disasters, border surveillance, or crop health assessment - where speed and reliability are critical.
Power of Full-Stack Intelligence
The future of EO lies in full-stack intelligence, not just better images. Companies that control the entire value chain - from sensor design to real-time insights - will lead. By integrating hardware, software, and regulatory expertise, they can deliver high-quality, low-latency insights, setting them apart in a rapidly commoditizing market.
The Team
In deep-tech and space-tech startups, we place a premium on teams that combine domain expertise, systems-level thinking, and the ability to execute across hardware and software stacks within the stipulated time. For Earth Observation specifically, it’s critical to have experience in satellite payload design, mission planning, and downstream data interpretation, given the high barriers to entry and long development cycles.
SatLeo Labs meets this bar exceptionally well. While the founding team delivers exceptional tech & business development prowess, the extended core team members are ex-ISRO veterans with over 100 years of combined experience across satellite manufacturing, space payloads, GIS, and AI-driven analytics. Their backgrounds reflect a rare convergence of upstream (hardware) and downstream (data/AI) expertise, with a proven track record of delivering complex space systems, ensuring commercialization. This depth enables the team to not only build high-performance EO satellites but also to productize insights tailored to real-world use cases.
New Era of Geospatial Intelligence
Today, SatLeo Labs is addressing immediate challenges by providing real-time, high-resolution thermal and multispectral data, helping industries make more informed decisions in agriculture, defence, and urban planning. But as technology evolves, we are just at the beginning. The future will bring breakthroughs that allow us to solve problems we can't yet imagine – unlocking new ways to monitor and manage global resources, predict and mitigate climate risks, and enhance human decision-making across industries. The true impact of this technology will unfold over time, as the methods and applications become more sophisticated, reshaping the way we understand and interact with the world.
