This aerospace engineer's firm saves fishermen's lives using satellite tech

Thousands of fishermen perish at sea every year due to poor connectivity technology. Parthsarathi Trivedi is addressing this issue via his firm Skylo Technologies, which runs a satellite-based network

Last November, ‘Mathura’, the boat owned by Tharanath Kunder from Malpe, a natural port in the Udupi district in Karnataka, sank off the Maharashtra Coast. Fortunately, the seven fishermen from Udupi, who were onboard Mathura, had a narrow escape. These fishermen included Vinod Harikantra, Mahesh, Lokesh, Shekhar, Gangadhar Jatga Mogera, Nagappa Narayan Harikanthra and Anil Gatabeera Harikant. 

The seven panic-stricken fishermen were shouting and screaming for help as their boat got damaged and started sinking. Luckily for them, a nearby boat, Mahur, which had a BSNL-Skylo 2-way communication device, heard their call to rescue them in the nick of time. 

Using its satellite-based BSNL-Skylo 2-way communication technology, the boat was able to raise an alarm with the Mathura’s boat owner as well as with the Maharashtra Coastal Security. The system was clearly able to communicate the exact location of the sinking boat, and provide support just on time to help save the lives of the seven fishermen. This system has been developed by Skylo Technologies, co-founded by Parthsarathi Trivedi, an aerospace engineer by training.

“It is very fortunate that the other boat was equipped with modern communications and was able to hear the screams of my crew,” says Mathura boat’s owner Tharanath Kunder. “They saved not only the fishermen but also their family from devastation.”

The lives of hundreds and thousands of fishermen are lost at sea every year due to the unavailability of modern connectivity technologies. These include satellite-based navigation systems that can connect Indian fishermen with mobile devices offering timely SOS  (Morse code distress signal) alerts and harvesting predictions to ensure better catches and safety while at sea. 

It is this problem that entrepreneur Parthsarathi Trivedi is addressing through his firm Skylo Technologies, the maker and operator of the world’s most affordable and accessible satellite-based network. It is designed to bring instant data connectivity to machines, sensors, and devices anywhere –even in the remotest geographies where machines operate.

A boat fitted with a Skylo device

How the technology works

“We have designed Skylo to be the most accessible connectivity layer for every data generator in the global economy,” says Parthsarathi Trivedi, chief executive and co-founder of Skylo Technologies. “We didn’t anticipate that we could effectively transform lives and livelihoods from the very start.”

These applications include fishing boats sending SOS signals and tap into markets while at sea. Also, smart farming equipment can notify farmers of a soil’s nutritional needs on a real-time basis. The other applications include trucks that provide early warnings before overheating and causing a critical delay in delivery. There are also applications related to instant alerting and updates from floor and fire sensors in a natural disaster.

For fishermen, the adoption of next-generation digital and satellite communications technologies developed by Skylo are expected to raise the productivity of fishing harvests. It would also address the urgent challenge to ensure the safety of the fishermen on the high seas. This includes the ability that allows fishermen to communicate even during the worst of storms, cyclones or other natural calamities.

“The ways in which India’s fishermen are calling Skylo’s data platform and seamless connectivity into action are astounding,” says Trivedi. “They set a benchmark for adoption in the rest of the world.”

Kunder, the Mathura boat’s owner, hopes such modern communications equipment would soon be widely available on all boats so that the fishermen are able to send timely SOS alerts for help.

The world is far less connected than we assume. Existing networks were designed and built to connect people. But machines require their own reliable network in the more than 80 per cent of geographies that are either sparsely unpopulated or, like the ocean, entirely unconnected. Skylo is enabling industries and government to increase safety, drive economic development and job creation, and help with disaster preparedness and response. 

Such applications are all made possible through Skylo’s satellite-based network. It uses existing geostationary satellites to bring reliable connectivity, making access to the Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity simple and affordable for millions of yet unconnected devices.

The firm’s full-stack solution consists of the Skylo Hub, the Skylo Satellite Network, and the Skylo Platform.

Skylo is the world’s first satellite NB-IoT (narrowband IoT, a low power wide area network radio technology standard), extending cellular standards to satellite connectivity for maximum affordability.

It connects under and unconnected machines like vehicles, tractors, railcars, trucks and maritime vessels to deliver critical and specific data. People in all corners of the earth - on land and out at sea - can send and receive high-value alerts and messages to stay safe and improve their businesses.

This is made possible through Skylo Hub, which is a rugged, easy-install device that connects a variety of standard sensors through the wire, WiFi, or BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). It continuously collects information even when there is no mobile coverage for miles. 

Machines can be moving or stationary, in freezing or sweltering temperatures, and the Skylo Hub continues to operate 100 per cent of the time. The  Skylo Platform provides a clear window into the information via mobile or desktop. This gives the users the ability to understand data, send and receive notifications, and enable real-time decision-making. 

The men behind the initiative 

Born and raised in Kolkata, Trivedi earned his Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University. He subsequently earned advanced degrees from both MIT and Stanford before founding Skylo.

He conceived Skylo while at Stanford Graduate Business School. As part of his MBA studies, he was co-leading research in the Space Systems Lab exploring how to connect billions of devices in a ubiquitous and cost-effective way. Trivedi then became an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors. There he and his co-founders continued to invent an affordable mechanism for remote industries including agriculture, fishing, mining and disaster preparedness and response to become connected for the first time. 

The other co-founders of the firm include chief technology officer Dr Andrew Nuttall and chief hub architect Dr Andrew Kalman. An alumnus of Stanford University, Nuttall has worked on multiple NASA and private-sector satellite missions. Prior to founding Skylo, Kalman was an associate professor in Stanford's Aerospace and Astronautics department.

Under Trivedi’s leadership, Skylo emerged from stealth mode in January 2020 with a $103 million Series B round led by SoftBank Group Existing investors DCM, Innovation Endeavors, and Moore Strategic Ventures also participated. The firm has raised total funding of $116 million. It aims to build a global fabric for machine data connectivity, targeting a growing market of more than 1 billion global devices.

Skylo has offices in San Mateo, California and Bengaluru and Tel Aviv, Israel. It continues to grow the team globally to support its fast-expanding customer base. Skylo’s systems have already been fielded successfully with major enterprise and government customers in India. Today, the company serves customers across the public and private sectors in industries that include logistics, agriculture and maritime. It is currently scaling customer implementations – launching the network first in India, with early deployments across fishing vessels, trains, trucks, tractors and more from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean.