The 20-Year-Old Building Internet Infrastructure for Space

Onkar Singh Batra's interest in space started at 14, in 2020. By 12th grade, studying at a defense school in Jammu, he had built InQube, which became India's first open-source satellite system — while also teaching space ecosystems as a guest professor at IIT Jammu, before he had even graduated high school. He had already opened his first website at seven, earning recognition as one of the world's youngest webmasters, and built a nanosatellite prototype called InQube at 12.

Now 20, Batra runs Apolink, a Palo Alto-based, Y Combinator-backed spacetech startup building what he describes as always-on internet infrastructure for satellites in low Earth orbit.

The Problem: Satellites Go Dark, Constantly

Apolink's core insight addresses something most people never think about: satellites in low Earth orbit routinely lose connectivity when they move out of a ground station's line of sight, creating communication "dead zones" that can last extended periods. Existing fixes — building more ground stations, or relying on relay satellites — are, in Batra's words, cumbersome and unable to guarantee a continuous 24/7 link. Apolink's answer is a hybrid radio-frequency and optical inter-satellite relay network: a planned constellation of 32 satellites designed to give customer satellites a continuous connection without requiring specialised hardware on their end, targeting close to 99 percent uptime.

Real Money, Real Customers

Apolink's traction has moved fast for a company barely two years old. In mid-2025, it raised a $4.3 million oversubscribed seed round at a $45 million valuation, backed by Y Combinator, 468 Capital, Unshackled Ventures, Rebel Fund, Maiora Ventures and a group of angel investors including Epsilon3 CEO Laura Crabtree and Pebble Tech co-founder Benjamin Bryant. Even before that round closed, the company had secured more than $140 million in letters of intent from companies in Earth observation, communications and spatial data, including Astro Digital and Hubble Network. More recently, Apolink signed a memorandum of understanding with Space Compass Corporation and JSAT International — a joint venture between NTT and Asia's largest satellite operator, SKY Perfect JSAT — to explore connecting Apolink's low-Earth-orbit network with Space Compass's geostationary relay service.

The company's first technology demonstration satellite, LinkONE/IPoS, is planned for a SpaceX rideshare mission, with a second demo to follow and full commercial rollout targeted by 2029.

Leading a Team Twice His Age

What Batra has been most candid about in interviews isn't the technology — it's what it takes to lead engineers who are, in many cases, twice his age, in an industry that runs almost entirely on deep technical credibility. His stated leadership philosophy is blunt: space forces you to be a team player, because no one builds a satellite constellation alone. He's also spoken openly about founder burnout and the deliberate choice to step back and reconnect outside of work as part of managing the pressure of running a hardware-and-orbital-mechanics company as a teenager-turned-young-adult founder.

Why It Matters for Young Entrepreneurs

Batra's path — a hobbyist satellite project in high school that turned into a venture-backed company solving a real infrastructure gap for an entire industry — is a reminder that the deep tech wave reshaping India's startup ecosystem isn't only about older, more experienced founders pivoting into hard problems. It's also producing entrepreneurs building genuinely technical, capital-intensive businesses before they're old enough, in most other industries, to be trusted with the title of "senior engineer."

Young Entrepreneurs

At www.elevatexstudios.com / ElevateX Studios, Young Entrepreneurs, part of our Founder Stories series, tracks founders building ambitious companies early in their careers — the bets they made, the setbacks they absorbed, and what their journeys signal for the next generation of builders.