So there’s a lot of news going around the “zero” bid that the Pixxel consortium put in for the PPP and all that jazz so thought I would clear some things up. Firstly the PPP was set up in such a way that the program was to be predominantly funded by the winning consortium themselves. Out of a 1200-1500 crore program depending on each consortium’s projected costs, 350 crores was to be given as a *loan* by IN-SPACe. This had to be paid back after operationalising the constellation and selling the data anyway. The operating model being that the investment and the ownership of the satellite and data would lie with the private consortium and INSPACe would work with the companies to sell it to all divisions of the Indian government and the consortium would monetize it globally on their own. And so a 0 bid or a 97 crore bid (that another consortium bid and publicly confirmed as well) or a slightly higher bid for a *loan* didn’t make a difference in the large scheme of things when one is executing a 1200+ project and raising 1100+ crore for it anyway. We considered this initiative to bring data sovereignty to India as an important national strategic concern that it had to be done - one way or another. And had to be done by someone who knew what this business entailed. And so we decided that we would not be outbid for it. Especially given how strong our technical bid was which had best in world capabilities some of which would be realised for the first time globally. There is a massive need for data by many parts of the Indian and state governments. And our consortium consisting of Satsure, Dhruva and PierSight already have experience and customer networks in our respective areas of expetise. Pixxel is building 5 VHR and 2 hyperspectral satellites. Satsure 2 multispectral satellites. PierSight 2 SAR satellites. And Dhruva Space is providing subsystems to the satellites and helping with the ground station infrastructure. And with Pixxel already having raised 95M dollars to date in funding (with other consortium members having raised their respective fundings as well) and with our commercial Firefly satellites up in orbit selling data globally already - we know and have seen what it takes to make this business work. And with that confidence we will move ahead to build some of the best satellites the world has seen. These satellites mentioned above are also something all of us were building anyway and would have built despite the PPP. The PPP just provided a more formalized way to go about it. As Dr. Goenka mentioned this is a sign of massive confidence that we see in the Indian data needs as well as the global data markets. And massive confidence placed in us as startups to execute this by the INSPACe team and the Indian govt. We won’t let the country down. To execution now.
