Prosus Ventures has led a $1.5 Mn pre seed funding round in Indian space robotics startup Cosmochute, backing its effort to build modular mobility infrastructure for lunar missions. The startup is part of the inaugural Atoms X cohort, a programme launched in partnership with Accel to support companies developing technologies for emerging industries.
The investment comes as India’s private space sector looks beyond launch vehicles and satellite services towards technologies that could support more complex operations in space. Cosmochute is developing systems aimed at making the transportation and deployment of equipment on the Moon more standardised and commercially accessible.
The company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate platform development, hire engineering talent and expand its space research and innovation work.
- Cosmochute Develops Modular Lunar Mobility Platform
Cosmochute’s flagship product, LEAP, is a modular lunar mobility platform designed to transport and deploy payloads on the Moon.
Lunar missions require specialised hardware and careful planning to deliver equipment to the surface and put it to work. Cosmochute aims to develop a reusable infrastructure layer that multiple missions could use, potentially reducing the need to engineer every deployment system from scratch.
The commercial case will depend on whether the platform can meet the reliability, cost and mission specific requirements of future lunar programmes. These capabilities remain under development; the funding announcement does not establish that LEAP has been tested on the Moon or is already commercially operational.
Cosmochute’s founders are three rocket engineers who returned from the UK to build the company in India. The startup is guided by Mylswamy Annadurai, former programme director of Chandrayaan 1, India’s first lunar mission.
Co-founder Janhavi Gore described the opportunity as the next stage of the space economy, moving from access to orbit towards enabling sustained activity beyond Earth.
- Accel and Prosus Back a Longer Term Bet on Space Infrastructure
Cosmochute’s funding comes through Atoms X, the frontier technology programme launched by Accel and Prosus to support early stage companies working on technically demanding businesses. The two investors announced the programme’s inaugural cohort in March 2026 after reviewing more than 2,000 applications. Under their partnership, Prosus matches Accel’s investment in each selected startup.
The company is among the cohort’s space focused ventures, reflecting investor interest in technologies that could support future commercial and scientific missions beyond Earth.
For Cosmochute, the near term challenge is to move LEAP from development towards a system that lunar mission operators can test and eventually use. That will require engineering validation, partnerships and a credible path to commercial missions milestones that typically take longer to reach than those of conventional software startups.
Editing by Deepak Singh
