Autonomous persistent aerial infrastructure for border safety, disaster response, and connectivity. Incubated at IISc Bengaluru.
India
Joined September 2025
- Tweets18
- Following2
- Followers65
- Likes24
Introducing India’s first autonomous tethered aerostat.
We flew higher than any structure in India!
Drones and cruise missiles are changing what air defense has to deal with, and meeting them needs new, asymmetric defense capabilities.
Thank you IISc and Bangalore City Police!
Thinking Balloon retweeted
🚨 Bengaluru-based Thinking Balloon (@thinkyballoon) has successfully tested their autonomous tethered aerostat for 3 days continuously.
The system can launch, hold position, dock and refill lift gas autonomously, with larger versions planned to carry hundreds of kg above 1 km.
Thinking Balloon retweeted
Wrote a quick short blog about our latest aerostat launch at @thinkyballoon, what's coming next, and why we want to get responsible use right from day one.
saurabhchalke.com/lighter-th…
Thinking Balloon retweeted
Introducing India’s first autonomous tethered aerostat, built by @thinkyballoon.
We flew higher than any structure in India!
Drones and cruise missiles are changing what air defense has to deal with, and meeting them needs new, asymmetric defense capabilities.
Great time with Hon. Union Education Minister Shri @JoshiPralhad at the IISc showcase today, walking him through our defense systems!
Thinking Balloon retweeted
@thinkyballoon featured in a piece today by @FinancialXpress!
So excited for the next launch in a couple weeks!
We've won the HDFC Parivartan grant today at IISc. This meaningfully accelerates our field trials and product iteration.
Huge thanks to @HDFCBankCSR for the generous backing and FSID IISc for being a rock!
Onwards.
Pretty excited to move into our new office at IISc!
(Does this mean we have to act like adults?? 🤷♂️)
Thinking Balloon retweeted
@thinkyballoon has been accepted into FSID at IISc Bangalore!
This grants us the seed funding, maker space, and the government procurement channels necessary to deploy our aerostat systems as force multipliers for air defense.
Thinking Balloon retweeted
Took a quiet moment to reflect on an imp technical milestone from our latest test launch: reliable steering and months-long endurance for our high‑altitude balloons.
saurabhchalke.com/catching-l…
We’re building autonomous balloons that last many months and collect 1,000× more atmospheric data than traditional systems.
Here’s a clip from a recent launch where we tested the altitude-control system of our current prototype.
The upper atmosphere is unforgiving: −80 °C in places, wild thermal cycles, and 150+ km/h wind shear at higher altitudes. These conditions make the stratosphere a very difficult place to deploy into production!
1
1
37
