Spacetech startup InspeCity has raised ₹100 crore, approximately $10.5 million, in its pre-Series A round led by Speciale Invest and Ashish Kacholia, with participation from Antler Elevate, Antler India, Manish Gandhi, Shastra VC, and others.
InspeCity builds machines that can travel to satellites already in orbit and service them, the way a mechanic works on a car, except the mechanic is a robot floating in space.
Satellites eventually run low on fuel or develop faults and are otherwise abandoned even though most of the hardware still works. InspeCity’s technology is meant to fly up to such satellites, inspect them, refuel them, repair them and extend their working lives, instead of letting them become space junk.
The company, founded in 2022, calls this long-term vision “Earth 2.0”, the idea that as economic activity expands into space, someone will need to build the infrastructure to move, inspect, maintain and repair assets already up there. Its near-term product, VEDA, is an autonomous in-space servicing system built on four components: a propulsion unit called GITA, a sensing and navigation system called CHAKSU, a robotic arm called RAMA, and a docking and refuelling mechanism called SPARSH.
Together, these technologies are the building blocks for increasingly capable orbital platforms spanning RIG (Remote Inspection and Guidance), VEDA, and SAMA (Space Based Maintenance Asset).
The ₹100 crore financing will support InspeCity’s next phase of flight qualification, commercial deployment and scale-up.
Over the next 12-18 months, the company plans to execute four in-orbit missions across the RIG-X, VEDA-X and SAMA-X mission roadmap, progressively validating its propulsion, sensing, autonomous operations, robotics, docking and refuelling capabilities in space.
In parallel, InspeCity will scale commercial deployment of its GITA propulsion systems and RIG-based capabilities, while expanding engineering, manufacturing and mission execution capacity.
Prof. Arindrajit Chowdhury, Founder and CEO of InspeCity, said: “When we started InspeCity, Earth 2.0 was deliberately a long-term thesis. We asked: if meaningful economic activity moves beyond Earth, what machines and infrastructure must exist first? That question led us to VEDA and to the propulsion, sensing, autonomy, robotics, docking, and refuelling technologies we have spent the last few years building.”
“This round marks our transition from proving technologies individually to qualifying an integrated architecture in space and putting it to work for customers. Satellite life-extension is the first major problem we are solving, but the ability to inspect, approach, dock with, manipulate, refuel, and maintain spacecraft is foundational to a much larger in-space economy.”
Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest said, “In-space servicing is one of the few categories where the technical moat and the commercial need arrive at the same time. InspeCity has built the full stack propulsion, robotics and RPOD in-house, which is rare anywhere in the world and rarer still at this cost base. We wrote their first institutional cheque and we’re leading this round because the team has done what it said it would do, on timelines unusual for hardware of this complexity. India has spent a decade proving it can put things into orbit affordably. The next decade is about what we can do once they’re up there, and we think this team is positioned to define that.”
Ashish Kacholia, Founder, Lucky Investment Managers said, “Prof. Arin and the InspeCity team have set out to solve some of the most complex challenges in the space sector from building and scaling satellite propulsion systems in India for a global customer base, to enabling in-orbit inspection, interception, docking, and life-extension services, alongside other strategic missions. Their success across multiple iDEX challenges and government grants is a strong validation of both the team’s technological capabilities and the potential of their vision. I wish the team every success as they continue to strengthen India’s space capabilities while building a globally relevant and scalable space-tech business.”
Published on August 27, 2026
