India, March 21 -- They spent their childhoods gazing up at the sky. Now they have a satellite out there, doing some of that for them.

Anirudh Sharma grew up in Bengaluru, the son of a DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) technical officer, captivated by the air shows his father took him to.

Tanveer Ahmed, also in Bengaluru (they were classmates, in fact), told anyone who asked that he was going to be a fighter pilot when he grew up.

Hundreds of kilometres away, in the foothills of the Himalayas, Rahul Rawat marvelled at the star-studded skies over Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand.

All this was just a few years ago. The three men are only 26. But their space-tech start-up Digantara (Sanskrit for Distant Land), recently launc...