Every map on your phone, every drone in the sky, every stock trade timed to the millisecond — all of it quietly runs on one invisible thing: time. The satellites overhead carry atomic clocks so precise that they can pin down where you are, and when you are, to astonishing accuracy. Now a Bengaluru startup is building that heartbeat in India, so the country’s most critical systems never have to depend on anyone else’s clock.
VyomIC, the space brand of AeroDome Technologies, is building India’s first private low-Earth-orbit constellation for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). On 31 October 2026, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) selected the company for Rs 12.55 crore under its Technology Adoption Fund, to develop an indigenous atomic clock ensemble for secure, precise timing in space.
Illustration: a VyomIC navigation satellite in low Earth orbit. (Image: VyomIC)
Why time is the real product
Navigation satellites are, underneath, flying clocks. A receiver works out its position by measuring tiny differences in the arrival times of signals from several satellites — and the more precise the clock, the more precise the position. Today’s GPS delivers accuracy measured in metres, which is plenty for driving directions but far too coarse for a drone swarm, an autonomous vehicle or a power grid that must stay synchronised to the nanosecond.
VyomIC’s answer is to fly much closer to Earth. Its constellation will operate in low Earth orbit, a few hundred to around 1,000 kilometres up, rather than the 20,000-plus kilometres of legacy navigation satellites. The company says the closer orbit brings signals that are 100 to 1,000 times stronger, converge faster, and hold up better in dense cities, indoors and in signal-contested environments where today’s systems struggle.
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The clock at the heart of it
The IN-SPACe-backed project is the ensemble itself: miniature atomic clocks combined with oven-controlled crystal oscillators, adaptive filtering and steering algorithms. Together, the company says, they deliver the stable, secure timing that a navigation constellation lives or dies by — and the same timing technology can serve other satellite constellations and deep-space missions.
Traditional atomic clocks weigh 30 to 40 kilograms, which makes satellites heavier and launches dearer. VyomIC’s chip-scale clock architecture shrinks that burden dramatically, which is what makes a constellation of small, affordable satellites possible at all. The company’s official target is striking: 5-centimetre positioning and 5-nanosecond time synchronisation, with authenticated, encrypted signals designed to resist spoofing and jamming.
A constellation built for trust
The full vision calls for 125 to 150 satellites, each weighing 30 to 50 kilograms with a five-to-seven-year service life, flying at around 1,000 kilometres. The company is working through a phased programme: rooftop payload trials first, then a four-satellite link test, and finally an in-orbit demonstration using ISRO’s PSLV Orbital Experimental Module platform.
The customers the company names show just how foundational timing has become: drones and unmanned ground vehicles, mining machinery and urban air mobility, maritime navigation and precision agriculture, telecom and 5G networks, data centres, financial systems, power grids and railways — plus defence, where resilient timing in jammed environments is a strategic necessity. VyomIC positions its system as complementary to India’s NavIC, built for the applications that need accuracy and update rates beyond what current systems offer.
From hyperloop to orbit
VyomIC was founded in 2023 by Lokesh Kabdal, Vibhor Jain and Anurag Patil, alumni of IIT Madras who previously led Avishkar Hyperloop, India’s premier student hyperloop initiative. That team secured $1.25 million in grants, built a 422-metre vacuum test tube — described as the world’s largest academic hyperloop test facility — and ranked among the top three teams globally at European Hyperloop Week. After Avishkar, they commercialised large drone swarm systems, and it was on those missions, the company says, that they first felt the limits of GPS first-hand: spotty accuracy, poor indoor coverage and total collapse in contested zones.
The name itself tells the story: Vyom, Sanskrit for space, plus IC, Indian Constellation. In September 2025 the company raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding led by Speciale Invest, with BYT Capital and DeVC participating, to advance its LEO-PNT payload and its spaceborne demonstration mission. The IN-SPACe grant, part of a Rs 67.15 crore package offered to four Indian space startups, now adds government backing to that private bet.
India already knows how to build navigation satellites. VyomIC is betting that the next leap is a sovereign, private constellation — small satellites, light clocks, strong encrypted signals — that keeps India’s drones, grids, markets and machines on Indian time, wherever they are and whatever tries to jam them.
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