At a Coldplay concert in July 2025, a kiss-cam moment went viral.
The crowd cheered. Social media lit up. But this wasn’t just about two people being caught. It turned out - one of them was the CEO of a tech company you’ve never heard of.

That company? Astronomer. It’s worth over $1.3 billion.
Major global investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Venrock, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused VC), Foundation Capital.

Btw, one of the co-founders is of Indian origin - Viraj Parekh

While gossip columns focused on the PDA, data engineers and SaaS nerds (like us) knew something else entirely - This company quietly powers the backbone of how giants like Apple, Airbnb, Ford, and Uber move data at scale

So what does Astronomer really do?
Astronomer is a DataOps company built on Apache Airflow - an open-source tool originally developed by Airbnb to automate data workflows

In simple terms:
If your company handles a LOT of data (millions of users, transactions, or files), you need a way to:

• Move it from A to B
• Clean it
• Schedule tasks
• Make sure nothing breaks

That’s what Astronomer’s platform, Astro does - It helps teams build and run data pipelines -without worrying about servers, reliability, or scale

 We found some interesting use case scenarios in the Indian context:

E-commerce (e.g., Flipkart, Amazon) - Managing flash sales

• When a Big Billion Sale goes live:
  • Pull in inventory data from warehouses
  • Sync prices across website, mobile app, and partners
  • Update dashboards every 15 mins
  • Flag out-of-stock items in real-time

Astronomer can help keep all these steps automated, monitored, and recoverable if one fails.

Similarly, in banking & Fintech (e.g., Razorpay, HDFC, PhonePe) - Astronomer can help in fraud detection & reporting

Think of it this way

• Every transaction gets scanned
• If anything looks suspicious (like sudden location change), trigger fraud checks
• File regulatory reports (RBI mandates) daily

Needless to say, Healthcare (e.g., Practo, 1mg, UnitedHealth) also make the most of patient data syncing

• Lab results, prescriptions, doctor notes from different hospitals
• Need to merge this data into one patient record
• Schedule data exports to insurance partners weekly

 Astronomer turns Airflow into a product (SaaS) - like making Excel available as Google Sheets for everyone. You don’t need to set it up from scratch.

So… Why Is Astronomer Worth $1.3 Billion?

Because the future of AI, analytics, and automation starts with clean, trustworthy data pipelines.

• Every business is becoming data-driven.
• Companies don’t want to manage infrastructure anymore.
• AI models are only as good as the data feeding them.

In short, Astronomer:
- Handles the plumbing
- Offers reliability, autoscaling, and observability
- Supports huge enterprise customers (like Apple, Ford, Marriott)
- Works across clouds like AWS, GCP, and Azure

It's like AWS for data pipelines.

What about Indian SaaS players?

India is building world-class SaaS too - but believe we’re early in DataOps.

Here are few Indian SaaS companies with a data/infra tilt that we found in our preliminary research:

So why did that Kiss-Cam matter?

It didn’t. But it did accidentally spotlight one of the most important software companies in the world right now - a company that's:

• Not building consumer apps
• Not chasing media attention
• Quietly powering the data engines of the world’s biggest brands

SaaS is cool now. But Infra SaaS? That’s the gold mine. Astronomer’s mining it better than anyone else.

P.S. Next time you're at a concert and see a viral moment, don’t just check the couple. Google the company.
You might find the next billion-dollar rocket ship in the background :)