Satellite imagery start-up Arlula lures $2.2m in funding

A space start-up which sells satellite images for as little as $10 is becoming increasingly popular among property owners.

Arlula co-founders Arran Salerno, left, and Sebastian Chaoui, who met at the UTS Space Society.

A Sydney space start-up founded by two men from Sydney’s Mt Druitt and Gladesville has received $2.2m in funding after ­developing low-cost satellite ­imagery.

The pair behind Arlula, Sebastian Chaoui, 30, and Arran Salerno, 40, met at the University of Technology’s space society in 2016, and within two years had the start-up up and running with customers from corporations, mining sites, oil rigs and agriculture businesses.

The new earth observation business, which sells satellite imagery and data from as little as $10, has also seen interest from curious homeowners who use the service to monitor their property from a distance.

The take-up from homeowners was part of a broader trend where people were looking at new ways and angles to monitor assets, Mr Chaoui said.

“Because we’ve brought down the cost and difficulty of accessing satellite imagery so drastically, it’s started to enable smaller-scale users being able to access satellite imagery to monitor their property,” he said.

“We’re also starting to see the emergence of consumers buying satellite data to make their own decisions (around property and other assets).”

Leading the $2.2m seed round was Main Sequence, the venture capital arm of CSIRO that pours money into deep tech start-ups. Black Nova Venture Capital also joined the round.

Main Sequence partner Martin Duursma said the fund was ­actively looking for space start-ups, which it believed were about to boom.

“We are right in the middle of the next wave of growth in the global space industry,” Mr Duursma said. “Arlula is one of the companies leading the way with easier ­access to space-based data that enables new insights and information that delivers critical commercial outcomes.”

CSIRO had been working with Arlula before its investment arm backed the business.

The business had nine staff but was looking to use the funding to expand, with its sights set on hiring six more people in the fields of engineering, sales and customer service.

Mr Salerno said Arlula’s platform was increasingly being used by insurance companies as the platform had sourced and provided access to older data. “You can’t measure what you can’t see, and that’s why people find satellite imagery to be unique,” he said.

“It gives people the ability to capture new insights for a growing range of use cases in different industries. Some uses are as simple as monitoring homes while others monitoring their crop or other regional assets.”