Rohit Jha calls himself a ‘big nerd’.
He developed a deep love for computers, space and ultimately science fiction in his early years.
Jha spent much of his childhood and adolescence coding games on a second-hand computer, observing stars through a telescope on the roof of his school, and reading the works of science writer- fiction Isaac Asimov.
Today, the 36-year-old is co-founder and CEO of Transcelestial, a deep space and communications technology startup that aims to make the Internet more accessible by developing and deploying a network of lasers between cell towers, street level poles and more, creating a fiber-like communications network.
To date, the company has raised around $24 million and is backed by names like Airbus Ventures, Wavemaker, and In-Q-Tel.
For the love of science fiction
Jha grew up in Jamshedpur, a small town that has since become a major industrial center in India.
In high school, Jha was chosen to participate in the highly selective National Physics Olympiad program, which exposed him to more advanced concepts like general relativity, string theory, and quantum mechanics.
After high school, he moved to Singapore to attend Nanyang Technological University on scholarship, where he studied electrical and electronic engineering. During this time, Jha says he worked on several major projects, including Singapore’s first space program, as well as the country’s first indigenous project. satellite.
It was during his high school and college years that Jha’s love of science fiction and space engineering kicked into high gear.
Journey to Fix the Internet
After graduating from university in 2011, Jha moved into banking and worked in high-frequency trading at the Royal Bank of Canada. While working in banking, Jha discovered a problem.
“It was in banking that I finally understood why the Internet sucked,” he said. “In my role in electronic trading, you’re really looking at optimizing latency between global trading centers. How quickly you can go from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to London…and who has the latencies the fastest is very important.
He discovered that most of the global Internet comes from a vast network of fiber optic cables laid on the ocean floor, which carry data between the world’s continents. Laying these undersea cables can cost billions of dollars and often creates bottlenecks and ruptures due to ocean activity, he said.
Notably, because the process of making the Internet accessible to people can be very expensive, companies charged with putting connectivity into the hands of citizens are often motivated to “only invest in cities where they have a sufficiently high chance return on investment,” he said. .
“So it really comes down to an economic game, and the incentives are severely misaligned across the board,” Jha said. While “tier one” cities like San Francisco or New York have priority, less developed markets or remote villages may not have the same access.
“There will never be a future where the Internet never exists unless we are wiped out…and the data will continue to grow,” meaning the divide between the haves and have-nots will also continue to widen , unless there is a sea change in the way the internet is delivered, he said.
Bet on yourself
After several years of work, Jha realized that the banking sector was not for him.
“I was lucky because it was a hand-picked team from across the company and some of the best people I’ve ever worked with in my life – very impressive people – but… at “Many times I felt like a cog in the entire organization,” he said.
Additionally, having grown up with a love of science fiction, he said it painted a kind of “utopia” – “a world in which I was sure that by the time I grew up we would have a means of transport to the Moon and Mars.
“I realized that we continue to live in a world where we were promised a future [that was] “I didn’t get delivered, and it was just really frustrating, and I just didn’t want to continue living like that,” he said.
Jha finally decided to leave after realizing, “You only have one life, and [I’d] rather work on things where [I’m] sitting on the edge of the unknown. » So in 2015, he quit his job, took a year off to travel, and started Transcelestial shortly after.
Big goals
In December 2016, Transcelestial was formed after Jha met co-founder Mohammad Danesh through a Singapore-based startup accelerator called Entrepreneur First.
“The first day I met Danesh and he was exactly the person I needed,” Jha said. “So we went to a [Indian restaurant]and we had a first biryani meal, we kept chatting, we had a second biryani meal, kept chatting, and then eventually it was clear that we wanted to start this business together.
After much discussion, they aimed to create “the largest possible space telecommunications company over the next few decades,” Jha said. They decided the best way to do this would be to use lasers.
“Lasers have the ability to carry data… for decades, that laser has been going through fiber optic cables, and that’s what’s powering our homes, our offices, our 5G data centers, everything,” he said. he declared. “What we did was we… extracted this laser from inside a fiber and used it wirelessly.”
“This means it benefits from the speed of fiber, but also the price and speed of deployment of wireless technologies. We can significantly reduce the years and months, even days and weeks, when setting up of Internet not only for a house, but even for a village.” or a city,” Jha said.
In 2024, the company deployed its lasers at the Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals via its shoebox-sized device called Centauri, providing enhanced internet access to T-Mobile users who attended the festivals, according to a Company. statement.
Beyond its terrestrial telecommunications activity, Transcelestial targets a larger target: space.
The company aims to develop a “constellation of small satellites positioned in low Earth orbit, allowing [its] laser network not only to beam across cities, but also upwards to connect continents on a global scale,” according to company statement.
“What we can do is actually drop a fiber optic cable from orbit using lasers. So instead of the cable, it will be a laser coming down into a city, and that will become the thorn backbone of the entire city,” Jha said.
Jha and his team ultimately seek to build the next frontier.
“As humanity develops, we need high-speed communications and connectivity in deep space,” he said. Transcelestial is working toward “expanding into deep space and building the necessary infrastructure…for automation and perhaps even human settlement within the next two decades.”
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