Join the global space race: Indian startups should aim to go where no venture has gone before

Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace has broken new ground in India’s space industry. Its Vikram-1 rocket reached orbit and deployed its payloads on its first attempt—a feat that eluded SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Astra and Firefly on their own maiden flights.

Skyroot’s success places India among a trio of countries with a notable private presence in the great beyond, the US and China being the other two. Till 2020, the sector was under the monopoly of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), whose trail of wins has been stellar.

Its Mangalyaan reached Mars orbit on its first try, Chandrayaan-3 made India the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon (the first near its south-polar region) and Aditya-L1 is studying the Sun from a special point, while SpaDeX has shown Isro’s capacity for auto-docking, crucial for future human spaceflight missions and space-station plans.

With Isro’s launch pads available to private players, we can expect ambitions to multiply on the spur of rivalry.

While reforms in 2020 opened the sector, the Indian Space Policy of 2023 created a framework for private entrants. In-Space helps companies access Isro facilities, technology and expertise. The government has also created a ₹1,000 crore venture-capital fund and a ₹500 crore Technology Adoption Fund.

The result is that India now has more than 400 space startups, with a sectoral target of $40-45 billion by 2033 and $100 billion by 2040, an upshoot from $8.4 billion last year.

The launch of Vikram-1 marks the first major orbital victory of this national thrust. Its payload haul included learning-hungry orbiters like Skyroot’s Scope and Grahaa’s Solaras S3, apart from German firm DcubeD’s space-tech tester and Cosmoserve’s Embrace, a robotic arm for a trial of orbital-debris capture.

It’s a signal that giant rockets are not all that space ventures are about, with demand evident for small gigs in low-earth orbit even as another global space race gains pace.

Skyroot’s Saturday blast-off boasted of a low-cost tech stack and has boosted confidence in the sector’s future, with its rival Agnikul Cosmos and others in hot-contest mode.

Yet, we must not lose sight of how far this industry needs to go. Its first challenge is talent. Skyroot’s founders are ex-Isro and a dispersal of Isro engineers across startups is natural, but India will need a wider well-spring of scientific minds drawn to frontier quests.

The second is scale. Globally, the SpaceX-led US industry dominates private orbital launches, with about 100-165 liftoffs a year and over 10,000 active satellites in orbit. China’s competitive but state-led sector sees 40-90 launches annually and has some 1,200 orbiters in operation. China is hot on SpaceX’s trail with reusable rockets, which have transformed haulage into a game of scale savings.

Hence the third is stiff global competition. SpaceX’s ride-share model aims to take small satellites on big rockets. Indian launchers must therefore compete on speed, flexibility, orbital precision and other counts.

The fourth is finance. Indian ventures must not fall short of capital. Skyroot’s billion-dollar valuation still lacks a clear exit route; and we await pure-play space-tech public offers.

All in all, while this sector can count on Isro’s platform and In-Space’s facilitation, it still needs to catapult itself into global reckoning. Skyroot’s rocket was named after a pioneer of space exploration, Vikram Sarabhai—an apt honour. Pride in the origin of India’s space trajectory is valid, but let’s be clear: the past is prologue.