National Startup Award 2020: Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space bags 1st prize in space category

Hyderabad-based startup Dhruva Space has won the National Startup Awards 2020 in the space category. The space technology company was founded in 2012. Dhruva Space is the first private space tech company in India.

The National Startup Awards is an initiative of the Central government under its 'Startup India' programme which seeks to recognize and reward outstanding startup companies that are building innovative products, solutions or scalable enterprises, which have a great potential to generate employment, create wealth and have a measurable social impact. Winning companies are granted a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh.

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Some of the products designed by Dhruva Space are at an advance stage of being flight-qualified and will be flown in the orbit by next year, said Abhay Egoor, Co-founder of the company

"We are happy that the Dhruva Space has been recognised as the winner at the National Startups awards under the space category. We are a company with around 20 members who work on all the three segments namely the ground, the launch and the space segment. We are now working with multiple partners across globe and India," said Abhay

"One product that we are working on right now is a 'Cube SAT deployers' which eject the satellites into the orbits once they reach into space," he added.

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Clients include government and private firms

Abhay said that Dhruva Space works with a range of clients including government organisations like ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and other strategic users who use space applications for defence purpose.

He said, "We also work for private organisations who want to use space applications for their business purposes and we are even open to educational institutes for their space research. With the support and appreciation given by the government of India, Dhruva space is planning to take their technical assistance across the globe."

The National Startup Awards 2020 was announced on Tuesday.

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(With inputs from agency)

(Image credits: Dhruva Space)