How it all started
Zendar was founded in 2017 by Vinayak Nagpal and Jimmy Wang, both Ph.Ds from UC Berkeley. Vinayak had spent several years in radio astronomy and Jimmy had spent time building high resolution street level mapping systems. Many of Zendar’s innovations can be traced back to techniques used in radio astronomy.
It was also during this time that the FCC opened up 77-81 GHz spectrum for automotive radars. Processors started to become cheaper and powerful enough to apply advanced radar signal processing techniques in the automotive context . In-vehicle data connectivity technology reached maturity as cameras started adopting central computing. Several factors came together that led to the founding of Zendar.