Indian-origin banker quit job to launch deep-space startup in Singapore, raises Rs 207 crore

Rohit Jha, 36, co-founder and CEO of Transcelestial. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

It was a leap of faith for Jharkhand's Rohit Jha when he quit his banking job in Singapore to launch his own company that dealt with deep space and communications technology. Now, the 36-year-old, who calls himself a "huge nerd" is the proud co-founder and CEO of Transcelestial that has raised $24 million (about Rs 207 crore) in funds.

Born and brought up in Jamshedpur, Jha moved to Singapore after high school to study electrical and electronic engineering at the Nanyang Technological University on scholarship. In 2011, Jha started working in high-frequency trading at the Royal Bank of Canada where he discovered a problem.

“It was in banking that I finally realised why the internet sucked,” Jha told CNBC Make It.

He found out that companies responsible for internet connectivity mainly focus on regions with a high return on investment and thus focus on tier-one cities while ignoring or giving lesser access to less developed or remote villages, Jha told the publication.

Around the same time, he figured out that banking was not the right industry for him.

“I was lucky, because it was the hand-picked team in the entire company, and some of the best people I’ve ever worked with in my life — very impressive people — but ... there were many times that I felt like a cog in the whole organisation,” Jha told CNBC Make It. "You have one life, and [I’d] rather work on things where [I’m] sitting at the edge of the unknown.”

In 2015, he quit his job, travelled for a year and launched Transcelestial. The startup 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.

Moreover, Transcelestial also has its sights set on space. It wants to develop a “constellation of small satellites positioned in low earth orbit, allowing [its] laser network to not only beam across cities but upwards to connect continents globally,” according to a company statement.