At a time when no distance is too far, chalking out missions to the moon or idle talk of colonizing Mars are upending dinner table conversations. From cautious crawls to risky leaps, humanity has traversed many years to reach this milestone, the scope of which is being broadened with remarkable frequency.

ISRO’s latest feat of launching 104 satellites on a single rocket may have set off a big bang of congratulatory messages from the world over including SpaceX founder Elon Musk, but what is notable is that its growing list of accomplishments is opening up the space for more star-gazing enterprises to explore more as they aim to shoot for the moon and beyond.

Moonshot

One such group, that goes by the name of Team Indus, has captured the imagination and attention of not just space aficionados, but sceptics in the space too. The Bangalore-based aerospace engineers under the startup Axiom Research Labs is the only Indian team in the final five competing to be the first privately-funded entity to moonshot as it readies itself for a monumental space mission later this year. As part of the $30 million Google Lunar X-Prize, winners of this global contest will get a chance to land their spacecraft on the moon to broadcast data and high definition multimedia back to Earth.

“Space as a subject has always appealed to people’s curiosity, precisely because there is so much more to be discovered and explored. However, there is no contesting the fact that lately there has been a lot more talk around this and several reasons can be attributed to this development,” says Co-Founder of Team Indus, Rahul Narayan.

“The rise of entrepreneurship in space-based services today can be credited with re-injecting a sense of adventure. Added to this, the emergence and success of people like Elon Musk and their canvas of dreams has been instrumental in bringing back that interest today,” he adds.

Space for more

In another part of the city, four-year-old Dhruva Space has become the first company in the country to design and manufacture satellites. With a larger aim of leading the privatisation of the satellite industry in India, the startup is currently developing an indigenous small satellite platform with primary focus on assembly, integration, testing and operation.

“People are beginning to understand that space is not just an elitist dream, but rather part of a critical infrastructure,” feels Co-Founder of Dhruva Space, Narayan Prasad.

“At the end of the day, the much-needed connectivity that can strengthen rural pockets of the country can never come from anything that is not in space,” he adds.

To infinity and beyond

While the genesis and goals of the two startups are poles apart, what unites them is the spirit of collaboration with which they launched into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Both Axiom and Dhruva are working closely with the most consistent operator in this industry in the country to meet their respective vocations. ISRO, on its part, is also increasing its engagement with private companies for satellite building and space research, among others.

“Collaboration is the name of the game – look at how humanity has benefitted from ventures like the International Space Station,” argues Naraynan, whose startup currently has eight former ISRO veterans working together with young engineers.

“We stand on the shoulders of giants like ISRO and would love to work more closely with the organization to help change the economics of the industry in India,” he adds.

Team Indus has a commercial contract with ISRO for the launch of its spacecraft, whereby its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) XL will inject it into the Earth’s lower orbit.

Dhruva’s satellites are also expected to be launched on ISRO’s PSLV. In fact, in his recently launched book ‘Space India 2.0’, Prasad has written in great length about how the development of India’s space industry started with ISRO helping entrepreneurs kick off small and medium scale enterprises by providing technology and buy-back opportunities, while encouraging spin-offs.

“Today, the landscape of the Indian industry that serves ISRO includes about 500 of these SMEs,” he adds.

Lost in space

These developments notwithstanding, Divyanshu Poddar, founder of model rocketry startup Rocketeers, sounds a word of caution against the direction these advancements are taking India’s primary space agency.

“ISRO is reaping the benefits of the path-breaking work initiated during the 80s, but it is slowly turning into a manufacturing unit whose sole purpose is to build PSLV and satellites and launch them,” says the 26-year-old former ISRO engineer.

“It should not be like that. Focus should now shift to outsourcing manufacturing jobs and operations of PSLV to private industries so that ISRO can concentrate on R&D and on developing research modules like Mangalyaan,” he adds.

On the right trajectory?

Despite all the dialogue and discourse around space in India today, Prasad strongly feels that merely acknowledging its merits on paper is not good enough.

“Digital India does not even recognise satellites as a means to digital connectivity – it finds absolutely no mention in the text of the programme,” he says.

“A popular World Bank research says that a country’s GDP can potentially go up by 1.8% if Internet connectivity is increased by 10%. It is a travesty then that India does not even have a National Space Policy that can take us down this road and expand India’s participation in this $300-billion industry,” he adds.

“The government has consistently increased ISRO’s budget year after year, but no such initiative has been taken to promote startups,” says Co-Founder of

“Most of these companies are bootstrapped and their revenues, however modest, come from sources abroad,” she adds.

The Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds announced by the government in its Startup India programme could have been one such initiative for an industry that does not see a lot of investment activity, but its deployment remains a challenge.

“Space is not exactly the business one invests in for immediate returns,” says Narayan.

“It takes time for investments in space to pay off, but when it does, unusually large multiples are involved,” he adds.

“Many investors admit that this is not a space that they understand,” adds Prasad, which compelled him to put some of his own money into the business initially.

Both also agree that not many institutional investors are knowledgeable about the sector either.

“Not many people have made money investing in this space and that could explain why they keep their distance,” feels Prasad. Even with a company like Team Indus, their investment has been driven by HNIs.

“This attitude will hopefully change sooner than later and efforts like ours will have to catalyse that shift,” he adds.

It’s rocket science!

Although companies like Axiom and Dhruva are slowly becoming part of the growing vortex of privately-funded startups in space services in India, Poddar strongly feels that some of the other companies are expressing reluctance in joining them.

“Take the example of Reliance Aerospace or Mahindra Aerospace for instance. Both want to actively participate in PSLV operations but ISRO is unable to provide contracts stating the number of launches they have planned. Private companies need more support from these institutions since they will need some kind of risk offset, which they are currently not getting from ISRO,” he says.

According to Poddar, discussions around privatising PSLV comes every five years – it happened last in 2012-13 – but it never follows through because of heavy regulatory hurdles.

“A lot of delicensing and deregulation needs to happen in terms of policies,” says Poddar.

Go on with a big bang

For Prasad, however, the most critical part of the puzzle is to create a new space ecosystem in India.

“The road is open for anyone to tread on. The Olas and Ubers did not have a regulatory framework when they started off and only when they reached a certain point did the government feel the need to bring in some regulation. This model can also be replicated for space, but before that could happen, it needs to grow and rise up to a level,” he says.

“This is just the start. Businesses that use the applications of space exploration to create socially relevant products have the potential to bring about a large number of jobs in India as well as accelerate societal impact,” adds Narayan.

“The potential is immense and reminiscent of the IT revolution in India. We hope more of the best minds in India will make their move into space-based entrepreneurship going forward,” he signs off.

Source: The Economic Times