Esper Satellite Imagery wins $1m Croc Pitch innovation award, will now set up a Darwin office
A million-dollar innovation prize awarded in Darwin will see a company that has developed a tool which cuts the cost of spectral imaging by thousands of percentage points will now set up a local office, the founder confirmed.
Northern Territory
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Esper Satellite Imagery, a Melbourne start-up that’s refining the way industry can access vital planetary surface data, has won the $1 million first prize at this year’s Croc Pitch innovation awards at Darwin.
Nine contestants were short-listed for this year’s finals, with the winner announced on Thursday after each had presented nine-minute pitches to the judges.
Announcing this year’s winner, Croc Pitch founder and Paspalis chief executive Harley Paroulakis praised Esper Satellites “impressive technology”, which could have a significant impact across a number of Territory industries.
“The judges thought it had incredible application to the mining, agriculture and space sectors in the Territory and we thought the technology is at a point where it has enormous upside commercial potential from a valuation perspective.”
Esper chief executive Shoaib Iqbal said the company was formed in 2019 and has since raised over $1m in private venture capital, which would be significantly boosted by the million dollar Croc Pitch first prize.
He said the money would contribute to the company establishing a base in Darwin, where the vast spaces and industry mix should generate plenty of work.
“We are building hyper spectral sensors, which are cameras that can capture deeeper and do the invisible light,” Mr Iqbal said.
“Basically that means we’re capturing hundreds of different colours and we use that imagery to derive chemical compositions of what we’re looking at.
“That makes it possible to find, for example, new mineral deposits, to tracking emissions in the atmosphere, all the way to looking at agricultural efficiencies and whatnot.”
While the technology has been around for some years, Shoaib said Esper’s innovation had made it affordable.
“We built an entire proprietary technology stack oursleves that we’re launching up into orbit and that’s basically 20-30 times cheaper than anything anybody else has attempted,” he said.
Instead of $50 per square kilometre for imaging, Shoaib said Esper has cut the cost to about $1.50 per square kilometre.
“We’re setting up an entire office in Darwin so hopefully in the next 12 months we’ll have about three full-time people working here,” he said.
XM2 Earth, which developed a heavy-lift tether drone system for uses including disaster recovery, telecommunication, mining and defence applications, and Connecting Dots, which provides a digital platform for “seamless communication and collaboration” across sectors, were runners up.
Sol Intelligent Classroom Solutions, an AI-driven educational tool supporting trauma-informed and neurodiverse teaching strategies in NT schools, received a $15,000 scholarship.
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Originally published as Esper Satellite Imagery wins $1m Croc Pitch innovation award, will now set up a Darwin office
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