October 25, 2026

-

Premium

INDIA'S SPACE BET

ON AUGUST 21, two days before National Space Day, the founders of 20 space startups, including Skyroot, Agnikul, Pixxel, Dhruva Space, Bellatrix, Digantara and GalaxEye, gathered at Seva Teerth in New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meeting offered a snapshot of how far India's private space industry had come: from an idea to orbit.It began as a working session, with actual hardware on the table. Dhruva Space showcased its P-30 platform and ground station antenna; Digantara displayed its sec- ond-generation optical payload. Around the table, the conversation turned to scale: from one rocket a month to one a week, and eventually several launches a day."His (PM Modi's) message to all of us was to make India the `go-to' nation for solving space technology problems that anyone is facing anywhere in the world," Srinath Ravichandran, co-founder and CEO of Agnikul Cosmos, wrote on LinkedIn after the meeting. Modi's own message on X was that India "can offer the world a strong, innovative and commercially viable model in the space sector".

BEYOND ISRO'S BLUEPRINT

CONTROL TO ALL STATIONS There is a hold observed at T-minus five minutes. All stations are requested to be on standby mode." The countdown had stopped. On July 18, Vikram-1, India's first private orbitalclass rocket, built by Skyroot Aerospace, was scheduled to lift off at 11:30 am from Sriharikota's First Launch Pad. Hundreds of visitors, including children, had gathered to watch the launch. Thousands more were following the broadcast across the country. The sudden pause in the countdown shook up the mood inside the launch control centre at Skyroot Aerospace's Infinity Campus in Hyderabad. Engi- neers rose from their consoles. Phones turned busy. People scrambled between workstations, checking screens, whispering to one another. The tension was palpable.Beyond Skyroot's campus, the hold message sent goosebumps through India's entire space community. Watching the broadcast in Chennai, Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder and CEO of Agnikul Cosmos, felt a familiar knot in his stomach."We had to abort two launches. One of them was T-129 seconds and the other was T-11 seconds. So, when they had that delay because of a hold, it reminded me of our own launch and our own countdown as well," says Ravichandran, who co-founded Agnikul in 2017 after leaving a career on Wall Street. "It means a