After graduating from university in 2011, Jha entered the banking industry and worked in high-frequency trading at Royal Bank of Canada. While working in a bank, Jia discovered a problem.

“It was in banking that I finally realized why the Internet sucked,” he said. “As part of my role in electronic trading, what you really focus on is optimizing latency between the trading centers of the world. How fast is it going from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to London, and who has the fastest latency, that’s A big deal.”

He discovered that much of the world’s Internet comes from vast networks of fiber optic cables laid under the sea that carry data between continents around the world. These undersea cables can cost billions of dollars to lay and often cause bottlenecks and breaks due to ocean activity, he said.

It’s worth noting that because the process of getting internet to people can be costly, the companies tasked with getting connectivity into people’s hands tend to “only invest in those cities where there’s an opportunity for a sufficiently high return on investment,” he said. .

“So it really comes down to an economic game, and the incentives are wildly misaligned across the board,” Jia said. While “tier one” cities like San Francisco or New York get priority, markets in less developed or remote villages may not get it. Same access opportunities.

“The internet will never exist unless we are wiped out…and data will always grow,” meaning the divide between haves and have-nots will also continue to grow unless there are sea changes in how the internet is delivered, he said. .

After working for a few years, Jia realized that banking was not for him.

“I’m lucky because it’s a hand-picked group across the entire company and some of the best people I’ve ever worked with in my life – very impressive people – but… there were a lot of times where I felt like the entire organization A gear,” he said.

Furthermore, having grown up with a love of science fiction, he said it depicted a “utopia” of sorts – “I’m sure by the time I grow up we’ll have transportation to the moon and Mars.”

“I realize that it’s really frustrating that we continue to live in a world where we’re promised a future that doesn’t come to fruition, and I just don’t want to continue to live in a world like that,” he said.

Jha finally decided to leave after realizing this: “You only have one life, and (I) would rather do things where (I) am on the edge of the unknown.” So in 2015, he quit his job and took a year off Went on a trip and started Transcelestial shortly after.

Jha founded Transcelestial in December 2016 after meeting co-founder Mohammad Danesh through a startup accelerator in Singapore called Entrepreneur First.

“On the first day, I met Danesh and he was exactly what I needed,” Jia said. “So we went to an (Indian restaurant), had breakfast, we talked about it, we had a second Indian meal, talked about it, and then it became clear that we wanted to start this company together.”

Jia said that after many discussions, their goal is to create “the largest space telecommunications company that may emerge in the next few decades.” They decided the best way was through lasers.

“Lasers have the ability to transmit data… Lasers have been running over fiber optic cables for decades, which powers everything from our homes to our offices to our 5G data centers,” he said. “What we do is … take the laser from inside the fiber optic and run it wirelessly.”

“That means it not only has the speed of fiber, but it has the affordability and the speed of deployment of wireless technology. Not only can we build internet for homes and even villages, but we can dramatically reduce the time it takes by years, months, days and weeks . Or a town,” Jia said.