Mcb777 Affiliate Desi SpaceX? These start-ups are all fired up

While most of us just yearned to leave the house in May, Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history by launching astronauts into orbit from US soil. One small step for man, but quite a giant leap for the private space industry. Musk isn’t the only businessman with big dreams; Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin; Richard Branson has Virgin Orbit.And now a bunch of Indian entrepreneurs look to be Musks in the making. Incidentally, Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, both only 22, say they were inspired by a trip to the SpaceX headquarters in 2017. The two BITS-Pilani students had become the Asian finalists for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, and travelled to California for the final challenge. “While we had gained some experience in building hardware as part of multiple competitions, our visit to the SpaceX headquarters gave us the confidence to launch Pixxel, the next year,” says Ahmed, who also got to meet Musk personally. medium78106045Earlier this month, Pixxel raised $5m, which it plans to use to put in space 24 small satellites.Even before Pixxel, Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM launched Agnikul Cosmos in Chennai. The company, which includes rocket scientists, former bankers, engineers and space lawyers, has raised more than $3m in funding so far, and is readying its launch vehicle capable of taking micro and nano satellites to low-earth orbit. medium78106069“There’s a lot of activity in this sector. I think it all started with SpaceX paving the way for a private company to do something meaningful and valuable. The bug has now caught on not just in the US, but Europe and even in India,” says Ravichandran, who quit his finance job to turn aerospace engineer.What’s different about these startups is that they are going beyond supplying piece-meal components, which was a model the private industry earlier took. Their ambitions have been bolstered by the fact that in June this year, India decided to open up the space sector to private firms. Another reason for the boom is that satellites have become smaller (some can fit into a shoebox!) which makes them cheaper to launch. medium78106086Narayan Prasad, cofounder, Satsearch, a marketplace for space systems and services, says if one looks at the entire value chain, there are about 50-60 space start-ups. Around 20 of them are in the upstream business of building rockets and satellites, while the other downstream entrepreneurs focus on satellite-based services such as weather and communication. Pixxel, for instance, has signed an agreement with India’s leading weather forecast provider Skymet to build customised products for boosting small farm productivity.According to Pranav Roach, president, Hughes Network System India Pvt Ltd, there’s no better time for start-ups. “Space is the final frontier from an exploration and business perspective and possibilities for start-ups to engage and contribute span the entire value chain.”The global space market is valued at around $360 billion and is expected to become thrice this size by 2040, according to Morgan Stanley. India’s current share in the global space market is just $7 billion (2%). medium78106130 So far, one start-up, Skyroot Aerospace, has already test-fired an upper stage engine while Ahmed’s Pixxel is all set to launch its first satellite in November from Moscow. Agnikul is working on launch vehicles, while Gurugram-based Bluesky Analytics, which raised $1.2m in 2018, generates geospatial data intelligence.Bellatrix Aerospace is actually, one of India’s slightly older space start-ups started in 2015 by 22-year-olds — Yashas Karanam, an electrical engineer, and Rohan M Ganapathy, an aeronautical engineer. “We are all geared up for space qualification of our thruster platforms, which will be a major milestone,” Rohan M Ganapathy, the firm’s CEO says, while his co-founder and COO, Yashas Karanam hails India’s move to open up the sector. “Globally too there are a lot of firms bringing new solutions, and most of them are coming from start-ups like us. Innovation comes when there’s a gap in the market, and people with long careers with say, NASA and Isro, won’t be able to see these gaps,” Karanam points out.But while billionaires like Musk and Bezos can afford the high risks involved with space tech, will small Indian startups have the stomach for it? Karanam isn’t daunted. “There’s risk and that’s why there’s opportunity!”Untitled Carousel 71461206