T.N. start-ups pitch their ideas to Modi during his Chennai Metro Rail ride

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay took an inaugural Metro Rail ride from Porur Bypass to Poonamallee and back on Sunday, some people carrying files and folders were seen interacting with him on board.

Upon watching the videos of the ride, many presumed they must have been officials of the Chennai Metro Rail Limited. However, those seated with the files, were actually start-up entrepreneurs from across Tamil Nadu explaining about their ventures to Mr. Modi, as Mr. Vijay looked on. It is learnt that over 15 start-up founders were on board the Metro Rail to meet the Prime Minister.

Vignesh Kandasamy from Tirunelveli, who is the founder and CEO of Thazhal Geospatial Analytics Pvt. Ltd., said: “We explained about Thazhal’s space technology solutions and how satellite-based assessment can track physical construction and its progress, delays, and risk, which helps to get greater transparency and accountability to the nation. The Prime Minister asked if we could track roads and bridges, and we said we could. We also spoke about the work we have done with the Tamil Nadu government on mangrove assessment and lake monitoring.”

Those who met Mr. Modi said they had been allotted around under two minutes each for the interaction.

Suseendar Marimuthu, CEO of Blunav, said Mr. Modi enquired about how his company’s solutions could help airports operate more efficiently and make air travel accessible to the wider population. “The discussion also touched upon data sovereignty, self-reliance in aviation technology, and the role of indigenous innovation in strengthening India’s civil aviation ecosystem and positioning it as a global exporter of aviation technology,” he said.

Blunav is a Chennai-based airport technology start-up developing artificial intelligence-powered airport operations management and passenger processing solutions. A winner of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) start-up initiative, Blunav has implemented its airport ground operations management solution at the Chennai International Airport.

Sharing details about his conversation with the Prime Minister, Ramesh Kumar, co-founder & CEO of Grahaa Space, said: “In July, we successfully launched and deployed our nano-satellite (called SOLARAS) in low-earth orbit through Vikram-1 by Skyroot Aerospace. We attempted an orbital launch from Alcantara Space Center, Brazil, through a South Korean rocket (Hanbit-Nano by Innospace Korea). I showed him the pictures from the launch, pictures of our satellites, and the systems/subsystems that we are building.”

Mr. Modi encouraged Mr. Ramesh to contribute to the space economy and assured him that the Government of India would support emerging sectors such as space. Grahaa Space is working towards building an advanced constellation of earth observation nano-satellites to stream near real-time geospatial video data.