Meet Shreepoorna S Rao: 23-year-old founder of Arctus Aerospace building unmanned aircraft for real-time aerial monitoring

To conduct earth observation, one no longer needs to invest thousands of crores and launch satellites. Now we can press a button and an unmanned aerial aircraft will go 45,000 feet in the air to capture pictures of the earth with the highest resolution.

This feat has not been achieved by scientists at work for years, or an organisation with enormous funding. But by a 23-year-old who dreamt of making aircraft when he was just 7.That man is Shreepoorna S Rao, the founder and CEO of Arctus Aerospace, a Bengaluru-based startup developing high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide affordable, real-time and high-resolution Earth observation.

"There are two or three American companies that have put 300-400 satellites out there. The images they are taking are at one square meter per pixel, but they are restricted," said Rao at a recent podcast interview.

He explained how his company targets the commercial users who need the data such as oil refineries, agriculture, insurance, shipping, gas and more. "It's about getting an image, whenever I want, wherever I want, however I want it," he added.

A childhood dream

"I have been building aircraft for the last 10 years of my life," said Rao. It was in seventh grade when he built his first RC aircraft. He gathered components from the area around his home in Surathkal, Mangaluru and built a manual aircraft. It was then he realised "this is my love."He participated in the National Children's Science Congress, aimed at inviting 10th and 11th-grade students into engineering. His mother said "You should participate in this," and he did.

In seventh grade with a team of his friends, he presented a project related to biogas. One that led him from the district to the state and national level at IIT BHU in Varanasi. The top 20 teams there had the chance to go for a one-month internship at IIT Kharagpur.

There he visited the aerospace department and got hooked onto airplanes. Now, a man who wanted to work at NASA, suddenly wanted to build airplanes. During his years at IIT Madras, he was involved in numerous aeromodelling projects and was a part of the aerial robotics club.

He had also participated in contests with Boeing and Airbus and had enough experience while working at the college's aerial club.The idea of a startup came from watching Elon Musk's Falcon Launch during the COVID-19 lockdown, when he wondered how the billionaire succeeded in it. "Where did he get the money from, what was he building?" he wondered. This is when he was introduced to the idea of a startup.However, when he appeared at the JEE Mains, he got a 4000 rank which failed his dream of joining an aerospace course.

Thus he went for an IIT, where there was a chance at learning deep tech and also a startup. There he took up a course of civil engineering.Initially, he ventured into Crypto but realised that there was no profit in it. Then, in his second year of college, he created a finance startup named 'FlexFinance' “Even Elon Musk had a PayPal before SpaceX,” Rao said as he remembers his “first love”.However, in his final year, he decided he would do what he came to IIT for.

When he began Arctus, his maths teacher mother and professor father were not convinced. They wanted him to take up a “regular job” to ensure his financial stability. But when he proved his capability, and received a $40,000 investment cheque from gradCapital, things changed.

Realising the dream

The journey wasn't easy. "What will this boy do? Where will he go and build an aeroplane?" said many when he approached other people for funding on a large scale.

"I used to be laughed out of rooms," shared Rao. In his final year at IIT Madras, he was approached by Grad Capital which helps out student founders. They provided him with $5000 (Rs 4 lakh) to build something.This was also the time when placements were going on in the college and Rao had pressure from home to sit in them. "Sit in placements, why are you doing this?" asked his parents.However, he decided that within a month, he would develop a proof of concept with the given money.

"Within a month I was able to build something that could fly from Bangalore to Chennai autonomously, 300-350km continuously."Initially, Rao and his team of engineers worked out of a 3BHK apartment in Bengaluru, with one bedroom being used for sleep, the two for inventory and the hall for assembly. Now, his team creates the aeroplanes in a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Kada Agrhara.“I always wanted to do something that would solve a hard engineering problem.

Something that would be challenging but would also have real-world applications. Build something from the ground up in India, for the world. And that is what I am here to do now,” Rao said to a media house.The first aircraft that came from Arctus Aerospace’s lab was the ‘Light Fury’. The name was adopted from Rao’s favourite movie, How to Train Your Dragon. This first version was a 2.5-metre wingspan aircraft, designed to reach up to 10,000 feet and stay in flight for up to three hours.

The design could meet mission parameters efficiently and take multiple flights without any incident.The mid-to-high altitude unmanned aircraft that is designed for earth observations usually operate on two platforms—the mid-altitude long-endurance (MALE), which operates at an altitude of 10,000 to 30,000 feet, and high-altitude long-endurance (HALE), operating at an altitude of above 30,000 feet.In the first year of operations, Arctus managed to raise over $2.6 million from early-stage venture capitalist firms, including Version One Ventures, South Park Commons, and gradCapital.

Angel investors such as OpenAI’s chief technology officer Srinivas Narayan, and former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, who slid into his X DM, have also come on board.On 10 April, the company, at their headquarters in Kada Agrahara, conducted a technology demonstration of its latest experimental aircraft, the Arctus AX-1. It is a specialised, eight-metre-wing-span unmanned aerial vehicle designed to remain airborne at about 20,000 feet for up to 10 hours.Now, in about a year, Rao’s team of 15 engineers aims to finally launch its showstopper—an aircraft with a wingspan of about 20 metres, capable of reaching an altitude of 45,000 to 50,000 feet and providing continuous monitoring for up to 24 hours.“In today’s world, data is power. We are not just doing this for our company, we are doing this to build an industry in India, which will follow soon,” he said.