They’ve built a ‘GPS’ that works deep underground, underwater, and in space

In this Q&A series, we suss out the opportunities, thinking, and motivations behind some of Asia’s promising startups. You can also catch our full startup coverage here.

Sahil Tapiawala and his team are building something that could be game-changing: sensors that use quantum mechanics to penetrate places that are out of reach for radar and GPS systems.

Photo credit: Atomionics

The uses for this technology are many: “We can exactly pinpoint mineral and hydrocarbon reserves, detect underground infrastructure, help submarines navigate, and build a new universal positioning system,” says Tapiawala, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Atomionics.

But the pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works, causing the team to scramble and come up with new plans.

In an interview with Tech in Asia, Tapiawala talks about his journey with the company so far and why he’s bullish about quantum sensors.

What’s the most memorable and/or pivotal moment of your startup journey?

Tapiawala: 2020 was a pivotal year for us as a team. We started experiencing the effects of the Covid-19 outbreak early on in January. Our hardware suppliers in China were immediately shut, we had to move our complete supply chain to India and the US.

As March came, these folks also had to go into a lockdown. In a brilliant move, everyone in the team doubled down and future ordered all our supplies. This move secured our progress through the year.

We faced immense headwinds in our primary market: resource exploration. Oil and gas prices crashed, demand died, and there was a trade war! Our agreement talks with customers fell apart and the market just dried out.

In addition, we estimated that we might not get to travel outside Singapore for our deployments in the near term. We had to immediately look for new markets and restrict ourselves to markets only in Singapore.

We went to first-principles thinking and identified what tangential domains our service could help in. We identified tunneling, underground infrastructure management, and construction. Cold-calling folks in these industries every day in the lockdown helped us secure four customers and spurred on a completely new industry for our “gravimeter.”

What’s the problem that your startup is trying to solve?

Our vision is to enable universal positioning underwater, underground, and even in space. This will bring down the cost of energy and make it affordable to the billions of people who can’t afford it by pinpointing mineral and hydrocarbon reserves exactly.