This startup is building unmanned aircraft to bring high-altitude imaging to businesses

What happened

Arctus Aerospace is developing long-endurance aircraft to capture video of oil and gas, mining, and agricultural sites for commercial use. Designed to fly in the stratosphere for 24 hours, the aircraft will carry optical, infrared, electro-optical, and synthetic aperture radar cameras to capture high-resolution video of specific sites.

Shreepoorna S Rao founded Arctus in 2024, straight out of IIT Madras, where he completed a B.Tech in civil engineering. Industries that need to monitor large sites from above largely depend on satellite imagery.

It can be costly to produce, while its resolution is often too low to provide the detail operators on the ground need. Bengaluru-based Arctus Aerospace is building unmanned aircraft to fill this gap.