In July 2024, when monstrous landslides tore through Chooralmala and Meppadi in Wayanad, rescue workers faced an almost impossible task — finding the living amid an ocean of mud and debris. In the end, 177 bodies were recovered, and another 77 were identified only through DNA analysis. It wasn’t just the scale of the tragedy that shocked the state — it was how long it took to find them.
The absence of advanced sensing tools in disaster zones has become an all-too-familiar pattern. Just last week in Payyanamon, Pathanamthitta, rescue teams spent two days at a quarry site after a rockslide, eventually retrieving the body of a trapped worker. Early this month at Kottayam Medical College, a woman died beneath rubble while responders struggled to locate her in time — delays driven largely by poor visibility and a lack of detection tools.
That’s the critical gap a small but ambitious startup from Thiruvananthapuram is now trying to fill — with a revolutionary device that may allow drones to ‘see’ through the earth.
Meet Augsenselab, a quantum and remote sensing startup founded in 2019 by five technologists, including ex-Siemens engineers Kannan Kesavapillai and Sudheer Krishnankutty Nair, and Tokyo-based former Sony and QuEST engineer Naveen Francis Chittilapilly. Their mission: build a radically new atomic receiver — an antenna-less, ultra-sensitive radio frequency (RF) sensor that can detect the faintest of signals beneath rubble, soil, and collapsed infrastructure.
“This is a fundamentally different kind of RF receiver,” says Kannan, CEO of Augsenselab. “We use quantum sensing to replace the need for massive antennas. What would normally require a football stadium-sized array, we’ve compressed into a lab-sized device.”
Conventional systems rely on bulky antenna arrays to detect low-frequency RF signals — critical for penetrating dense material like rock and concrete. But such systems are too large and impractical for field deployment, especially on drones. “That’s where we come in,” adds Augsenselab CTO Naveen. “We use completely different physics to detect low-frequency signals without the need for any antenna at all.”
Their flagship product, the antenna-less atomic receiver, is currently at Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL-4), meaning its core components have been integrated and tested in a lab.
“We’ve proven it works under controlled conditions. The next steps are about miniaturisation, robustness, and scaling up,” says Sudheer, COO. “Our ultimate aim is to mount this on drones and deploy it in disaster zones.”
To help realise that goal, Augsenselab recently raised USD 0.5 million in pre-seed funding from Emul Tek Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Solar Industries India Ltd. The company is also in advanced talks with iDEX, the Ministry of Defence’s innovation arm, to build prototypes for national defence and disaster management.
But the founders are clear-eyed about the timeline. “This is an aerospace-grade product. It’s a deep R&D effort that takes time,” says Kannan. “Getting from TRL-4 to TRL-8 and making a deployable product will take at least four years. We’re building for the long haul.”
Meanwhile, Augsenselab is also developing hyper-local weather prediction systems, which could transform early warning efforts in a state like Kerala, where most landslides are triggered by cloudbursts. “IMD forecasts are too broad. We want to say: not just Kochi, but Kaloor will face a cloudburst at 3 pm,” says Naveen.
Their atmospheric profiling tech measures minute changes in the air’s refractive index, allowing pinpoint accuracy. A pilot project is underway in Kerala, funded by K-DISC and deployed by the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA). The data is also being used in a landslide prediction model developed by IIT Roorkee.
“If we can detect a cloudburst early, we can issue warnings with hours of lead time,” says Kannan. “We’ve deployed test systems in zones like Kannichira near Kottiyoor in Kannur.”
To scale their vision, the team is exploring High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS) — solar-powered drones that can hover 20 km above the Western Ghats, monitoring weather systems continuously for weeks.
While disaster management is their current focus, the technology has potential in mining, infrastructure, and defence. “This is core product development — patents, IP, real innovation,” says Kannan. “Ours might well be India’s first private quantum sensing lab.”
From real-time rubble scanning to hyper-local weather forecasting, Augsenselab is building futuristic solutions from scratch. And the next time disaster strikes, it won’t just be boots on the ground — it might be drones that see through the mountain.