Start-ups line up for space glory, but still very far from 'SpaceX moment'

Roughly 70% of these start-ups were launched after 2020; of $245 mn that the sector has received in last seven years, $198 mn came after 2020

In 2017, when Awais Ahmed met SpaceX founder Elon Musk in the US as part of a student project, he never thought one day his start-up would become one of the most talked about spacetech companies in India.
 

Last week, Pixxel, which Ahmed co-founded with Kshitij Khandelwal in their final year at BITS Pilani in 2018, launched a hyperspectral satellite called Anand, the first of its 36-satellite planned constellation. 
 

The success story of the 25-year-old duo is not an isolated case in India’s space sector. There are about half a dozen companies such as Agnikul, Skyroot, Dhruva Space, and Bellatrix that have tasted success this year, making space one of the sunrise sectors.
 

According to the Indian Space Association (ISpA), though start-ups started coming into the sector way back in 2012, actual tests happened only in 2022. For any space start-up or private sector company, evidence of their capability comes to the fore when they go into space.
 

“In the last two years, almost 70 new start-ups came to the sector. Also, investor interest is going up. This year alone, around $100-110 million was invested in the space sector. Right now, there are six to seven private sector companies that have made significant progress in the sector,” said businessman Pawan Goenka, chairman of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), which acts as a bridge between private space firms and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
 

But, is this the ‘SpaceX moment’ for India? “We are very far from it,” said Goenka. “It is just the beginning. SpaceX took more than 20 years to get to where it is today. It is too premature for us to talk about a company as large as SpaceX. Everybody would like to see India get there,” he said. 
 

Private firms’ first major achievement came on June 30 when a PSLV-C53 mission carried payloads from Indian space start-ups Digantara and Dhruva Space, backed by IN-SPACe. “That was the first space test of start-ups in India,” said A K Bhatt, director general, ISpA.
 

This was followed by another private sector success story on October 23 as 36 satellites by OneWeb (not a start-up, though) were launched in the maiden commercial mission of LVM3 -- India’s heaviest launch vehicle, also known as GSLV Mk III.

On November 18, another landmark was achieved when India successfully launched its first privately developed rocket, the Vikram-S, a 545-kg rocket developed by Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace. Days later, on November 26, the PSLV C54 mission launched Dhruva Space and Pixxel satellites into orbit. On November 28, Agnikul Cosmos set up India’s first-ever launch pad designed and operated by a private player at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

 

“I am sure that in upstream, midstream and downstream, there would be effective players from India. Proper regulations and funding are important for its growth. IN-SPACe and ISRO are handholding the private sector,” Bhatt said.
 

Based on the ISpA data, out of around 386 companies in the space sector, 104 are start-ups.
 

Since IN-SPACe was set up in February 2021, it has got 150 proposals from private sector players, and according to Goenka, more than half of them were from start-ups.
 

Aggressive moves by start-ups are inviting a lot of investment, and foreign interest too.
 

“We will be launching six satellites next year. We are looking at 24 in the near term, then a total of 36 to extend it. We have customers from North America, Europe, South America, India, and Australia. We have at least 30 medium to large enterprises as customers now,” said Khandelwal of Pixxel, which will come up with a satellite assembly unit near Bengaluru.
 

According to the ISpA data, of the $245.35 million that the sector has received in the last seven years, $198.22 million came after 2020. Investors, too, are upbeat about the rising activities in recent months.
 

“We started looking at spacetech way back in 2017 because we believed its time was coming, but its rise has significantly exceeded even our outlier expectations,” said Sheetal Bahl, partner, Merak Ventures, an early-stage venture fund.
 

“We took early bets on Bellatrix and Pixxel from our first fund, growx ventures, both of which have matured very nicely. We believe space will become part of many solutions on the ground in the coming years – from the democratization of internet access to a multitude of climate solutions. And we will continue to explore this sector in the coming years,” Bahl added.