Quasar

What impact is your company hoping to make on the world?

We pride ourselves on being a sovereign company and nothing would bring us more joy and pride than seeing Australia lead the world in Space Communication Technology.

Phil Ridley

CEO, Quasar

Phil Ridley is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia and a Chartered Professional Engineer with over 25 years’ military engineering/aerospace/telecommunications and startup experience. He has deep experience with phased array technology in aircraft radar and submarine sonar and defence/Optus satellite, and had key executive roles in the design and launch of Bigpond and Unwired Australia ISPS, and the design and operations of 4/5G terrestrial data networks. He is also a former RAAF Electronic Engineering Officer with training in cryptographic handling.

Phil is the winner of multiple Engineers Australia national awards, including the Bradfield Award for Engineering Excellence for the Ubowireless 4G network optimisation system, and is an international patent holder.

Rashmi Karanth

Head of Products & Delivery, Quasar

Rashmi Karanth is a Digital Artisan who is completely obsessed about building customer-oriented user-centric digital products and services. Rashmi has over a decade of experience working in the United Kingdom and Australia for companies such as Airbus, Jaguar, J&J, National Audit Office, UK, Veolia, Mojo Power and Westpac. Rashmi has practical leadership experience working in diverse and complex environments with a proven track record of building complex and successful digital products and services whilst leading high performing teams, organisations, and commercial strategies across multiple industries & sectors. Outside work Rashmi has keen interest in space-related technologies and Formula 1.

How many Founders has your company got? How did you meet?

Quasar was the brainchild of Dr Ilana Feain who is the commercialisation officer at CSIRO. It was DR Ilana who stood up a business case for Quasar internally at CSIRO to spin up a start up to commercialise the amazing cutting edge CSIRO’s cryogenically cooled phased array technology which was developed as a part of radio telescopes like its ASKAP telescope in Western Australia. The highly sensitive, multiple beam receiver systems provide a wide-angle view of the sky enabling various use cases for space communication technologies. Dr Ilana brought in the industry partners to fuel Quasar’s space dream which included Main Sequence Ventures, CSIRO, Clearbox Systems, Fleet Technologies and Saber Astronautics. Each of our partners bring their own strengths to the table which is a combination of Deep Tech venture capitalists, Satellite operators, Space comms software manufacturer Clearbox systems, Vocus who build and manage 30k fibre network in Australia and Saber Astronautics who is a global provider of next gen space visualisation product and services.