Success story of startup Sagar Defence: From 150 sq ft workspace to leading provider of swarm boats to Navy

NEW DELHI: A startup that started its operations from a tiny 150 sq ft workspace in Mumbai has now grown into a full-fledged defence company with major R&D and manufacturing campuses in Pune and Andhra Pradesh. The success story of Sagar Defence, which was founded in 2015 by Capt Nikunj Parashar along with co-founders Mridul Babbar, Lakshay Dang, Saurabh Patil, and Ankit Kumar, is replete with failures, hard work and perseverance.While addressing a gathering at the Indian Navy’s ‘Swavlamban’ Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Seminar here as a guest speaker on Monday, Capt Parashar disclosed that he survived two heart attacks and a paralytic stroke and faced a lot of setbacks while struggling to make their company witness success. Sagar Defence is now a leading player for swarm boats, autonomous and unmanned weapons systems to the Indian armed forces, especially to the Indian Navy. Similar unmanned or swarm boats have been used by Iran and the US to attack each other and for surveillance purposes during the ongoing West Asia conflict.Under the Navy’s iDEX ‘SPRINT’ contract, the Pune-based company has now begun supplying 12 armed unmanned surface vessels (USVs)—including their signature ‘Matangi’ craft—to the Indian Navy. These high-speed, interceptor boats are equipped with 12.7mm stabilised remote-controlled gun stations, advanced electro-optical radar tracking, and anti-jamming GPS navigation to strike targets autonomously. They can be used as an unmanned boat for surveillance and offensive operations in shallow waters or can even carry marine commandos (Marcos) for special operations. Some of these boats have also been deployed at the Pangong Tso lake in eastern Ladakh by the Army for patrolling.Sagar Defence also produces custom multi-payload quadcopters and hexacopters such as Spectre and Varuna series and Maritime Spotter Drone designed to land on moving warships. The Indian company has also partnered with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to co-develop and introduce the "Point Blank" precision strike missile to India. This is a hand-launched, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) system that acts as a loitering munition for high-speed precision strikes.At the ‘Swavlamban’ naval exhibition at Manekshaw Centre, another startup Zen technologies displayed their autonomous surface vessel prototype, which is a multirole and networked unmanned craft that can be used for surveillance, fire support, anti-submarine warfare and for other naval missions. C14 unveiled its Tandav autonomous, modular USV platform and also AquaScan, an AI vision device that can be used by divers for underwater vision. A C14 representative said the Navy has shown interest in its AqaScan and plans to buy it.Space startup Galaxeye is offering the Navy a satellite-based solution for keeping an eye on hostile or shadow vessels that loiter around in Indian waters. “Besides wide-area monitoring, night-time and adverse weather monitoring, we are ready to offer a solution to the Navy to detect an unknown or unidentified vessel that is loitering around in the Indian waters from space itself. Our satellite-based system can even provide the entire data or history of that shadow vessel with a click of the mouse,” Aarav Saexna, forward deployed engineer of Galaxeye, told TOI.