The prototypes are smaller than expected. That's what Satya Gopal Panigrahi keeps emphasizing when he talks about CONSTELLI's latest electronic warfare systems—compact enough to challenge what Israeli and Western defense contractors have long dominated, but built entirely from an industrial park in Hyderabad.
On February 27, 2026, the seven-year-old defense signal processing company closed a $20 million funding round that suggests investors are starting to believe him. General Catalyst led the round, with 360 ONE Asset Management and returning backer Pravega Ventures joining. The capital injection, equivalent to roughly ₹180–190 crore, brings CONSTELLI's total raised to approximately $23 million. Just over a year ago, the startup had secured $3 million in what it called a pre-Series A.
For a company that began selling software add-ons to radar engineers, the trajectory is striking. Perhaps more striking: the speed with which CONSTELLI has assembled a customer base spanning India's Defense Research and Development Organisation, Singapore's military apparatus, and contractors as far-flung as Turkey and South Korea.
From Toolkits to Turnkey Systems
Panigrahi and co-founder Avinash Chenreddy launched CONSTELLI in 2017 with a modest pitch: software toolkits, essentially LabVIEW add-ons, for engineers developing radar and electronic warfare systems. The business model was straightforward, the margins acceptable. But the founders harbored bigger ambitions.
"The goal was to build a global technology company from India," Panigrahi told ETtech in an exclusive interview. Not just supply chains or back-office engineering, but end-to-end systems that could compete on international tenders.
The company pivoted from subsystems to complete hardware-software packages. Today, CONSTELLI manufactures electronic warfare signal generation suites, radar target echo simulators, and telemetry receivers designed for deployment across drones, ground vehicles, naval platforms, and satellites. It's the kind of diversification that defense primes pursue over decades; CONSTELLI compressed it into seven years.
How? Panigrahi credits the company's reliance on National Instruments' modular hardware ecosystem, married to proprietary FPGA and digital signal processing work done in-house. The approach allows for rapid iteration—prototyping in labs rather than burning budget on costly flight tests. Whether that strategy scales to mass production remains an open question, one the new funding is meant to answer.
A Dual-Market Dance
India's defense budget for 2026–27 sits at ₹7.84 lakh crore, a figure that continues its upward march as geopolitical tensions simmer along the country's borders. CONSTELLI's core customers—the Ministry of Defence and DRDO—provide steady revenue. But the startup has also cultivated export relationships that hedge against the slow-moving procurement cycles endemic to Indian defense contracting.
Singapore, Australia, South Korea. The company website hints at Turkish partnerships, though specifics remain vague. This dual-market strategy is deliberate: capitalize on domestic demand while positioning CONSTELLI as an alternative supplier for nations wary of overreliance on Western giants or Chinese manufacturers.
The company claims a notable first: India's inaugural IRIG-standard digital telemetry receiver, adhering to international standards maintained by the Range Commanders Council. Its current catalog includes electronic intelligence simulators, drone jammers, ground-penetrating radars, and drone-mounted telemetry payloads with 45-minute endurance and live data relay capabilities.
Impressive on paper. The test will be whether CONSTELLI can deliver at scale without the quality drift that often accompanies rapid manufacturing ramps.
Investors Betting on Strategic Resilience
General Catalyst's interest in Indian defense tech is no longer speculative. The firm led Raphe mPhibr's $100 million round last June and holds stakes in Jeh Aerospace domestically. Globally, its defense portfolio reads like a who's who of next-generation contractors: Anduril, Helsing, Vannevar Labs, Onebrief.
Neeraj Arora, General Catalyst's India and MENA CEO, framed the CONSTELLI investment in broader terms. "Indigenous innovation India needs to build strategic resilience in AI-led defence technology and electronic warfare," he said—a statement that doubles as thesis and marketing pitch for a fund increasingly focused on dual-use technologies.
360 ONE Asset Management arrived with fresh conviction and fresh capital. The firm, a subsidiary of 360 ONE WAM (the rebranded IIFL Wealth), launched a ₹1,000 crore Defence & Spacetech fund in January 2026, with provisions to expand to ₹1,500 crore. CONSTELLI marks its third deployment, following investments in CoreEL Technologies and Sisir Radar. Pravega Ventures, which led the startup's January 2025 round, chose to double down.
Context matters here. India's defense tech sector attracted $247 million in 2025, according to Tracxn data, with capital clustering in larger deals. Broader deeptech funding across India surged 37 percent year-over-year to $2.3 billion in 2025, per Nasscom and Zinnov research, fueled partly by AI hype and partly by genuine advancements in dual-use applications.
The Miniaturization Gambit
CONSTELLI operates from offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru with a team LinkedIn pegs at 11–50 employees—a lean operation for the ambition on display. The company lists partnerships with Ansys and NI-Emerson, and a SAAB RDS logo appears on its website, though no separate commercial terms have been disclosed. It maintains an active role in India's defense innovation ecosystem, including participation in the India Innovation Growth Programme backed by the Department of Science and Technology, Lockheed Martin, and Tata Trusts.
The new capital will flow toward R&D on next-generation electronic warfare and communications payloads, Panigrahi said. But crucially, it will also fund infrastructure—rapid prototyping facilities and early-stage production lines. The company's near-term roadmap centers on miniaturization and vertical integration, building more components in-house to reduce reliance on third-party modules.
It's a classic deeptech inflection point. Labs are forgiving. Production floors are not. CONSTELLI's ability to manufacture at scale without sacrificing the iteration speed that made its prototypes competitive will determine whether this $20 million bet pays off—or becomes another cautionary tale of promising tech that couldn't bridge the valley between proof-of-concept and deployment.
For now, the prototypes remain smaller than expected. Whether that holds true at volume is the question investors are gambling $20 million to find out.
