What is Skyroot Aerospace?
The Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited was formed in July 2018, as an Indian Private Aerospace Manufacturer and commercial launch service provider, headquartered in Hyderabad. This aerospace organization was founded by the former ISRO scientists Pawan Kumar Chandana, and Naga Bharath Daka with the support of Vasudeva Gnanagandhi, backed by a group of small entrepreneurs which included CureFit funders, Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagor.
Skyroot Aerospace aims at developing its series of small-lift launch vehicles, which are specifically designed for the small satellite market.
Funding: Skyroot Aerospace
The Skyroot space organisation has a total of 15 nos. of investors, with 5 lead investors, which provides the necessary financial support for its various projects. The most recent investors of Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited are LNM India Internet Ventures and Waverly.
Recently, Skyroot has been able to successfully raise a fund of US $51 Million ( 403 crores INR), in its series-B financing round from GIC, which is one of the most established investors of the aerospace organization.
Some of the lead financing bodies of the Skyroot space organization are Waverly, ANIC-ARISE, Sherpalo Ventures, Wami Capital, Mahesh Kolli, and Anil Chalamalasety, whereas some minor investors are the LNM India Internet Ventures, Neeraj Arora, Amit Singhal, Sutton Capital, to name a few.
The funding of Skyroot started in mid-2018, which began with a fund-raise of $1.5 million by Mukesh Bansal, with the help of his Meraki Labs. This brought the total collection of $17 million, considered the largest fund-rise on the Indian Space start-up yet, as reported in a press release by Pawn KumnarChadana and Naga Bharath Daka.
Then in the upcoming years, the space organization bagged a fund-rise of $4.5 million which paved its way to the ‘Series-B’ fund, co-led by the existing investor of Wami Capital, Neeraj Arora (former CBO of Whatsapp), and Amit Singhal, former Google executive.
Led by Greenko founders and participants from the publicly listed Solar Industries India Limited, as well as WorldQuant Ventures, Graph Ventures, and others, Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited raised about $ 11 million in the Series-A funding round.
What vision does Skyroot Aerospace hold?
Skyroot Aerospace holds the vision to develop its series of small lift launch vehicles, which are being crafted considering the small satellite market. Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited has been on a mission to open access to space for everyone and has been trying to make advancements in the technology available in today’s era, to address the rising concerns in the global space industry and provide low-cost launch solutions in order to reach the outer-space in a much lesser amount of time.
They aim towards a future where Space will one day become a part of people’s lives, and this promises to open new opportunities and transform humankind.
Recent successful events: Skyroot Aerospace
The Skyroot space tech aims at addressing the concerns arising in the field of the global space industry, and this has marked the launch of three launch vehicles namely, Vikram I, II, and II that can carry a payload ranging from 200 Kg to 700 kg to low Earth orbit. Named after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of the Indian Space Program, these launch vehicles are carefully crafted considering the small satellite market.
With the start of the project in late 2020, the Vikram-S was developed within two years, which is powered by solid-fuelled propulsion, with cutting-edge avionics, as well as overall carbon-fibre, built.
Recently, the aerospace team has tested a 3D printed liquid propellant engine and fully composite (carbon fibre) as well as a high-performance solid rocket motor. Stated by Pawan Kumar Chandana, the aerospace start-up has planned some fascinating space products, which are confirmed to be announced by the early phase of next year. Moreover, the rocket architecture under Skyroot aerospace is highly mass-produced and modular which can triple the payload capacity with some additional upgrades.
Future scopes of the Skyroot Aerospace
Recently Skyroot Aerospace successfully launched one of India’s first privately built rockets and the organisation has been planning to launch two more rockets in a month at the end of 2025. Also, the organisation has been focusing on developing reusable rocket engines for the ’Vikram’, which would promisingly reduce space waste, as well as will remarkably cut down the expenses of constructing more rockets.
As stated by Pawan Kumar Chandana in an interview, “Our next launch will commence within next year, and it will be able to carry client payloads as well as deploy them to the orbits. Also, we want to achieve the consistency of launching two rockets every month, at least by the end of 2025”; this has highlighted the prospects of Skyroot and its foundational body.
According to Chandana, the launch of the Vikram-S suborbital rocket on 18th November provided trust to the global investors and clients in the advancements of the Space sector of India, where other global aerospace companies have been able to travel only 80km into space in their first attempt.
The future ambition of Skyroot is to develop a public-private partnership model to exist for the space sector, which will involve ISRO to license specific missions for the indigenous space firms to conduct space missions. This model will be exactly like the ones which exist in the US, where NASA sanctions the projects for many private space firms to work on, as stated by Chandana.
How Skyroot is different from other global space firms?
SpaceX, an American Aerospace company made its first orbital commercial spaceflight in October 2008, which carried private satellites into their orbits. After 14 years of this globally remarkable event and with a funding of over $10 billion, the SpaceX aerospace company performs an average of 5 rocket launches every month, completing 56 successful launch missions as of 20th November.
Compared to the success of SpaceX, Skyroot Aerospace established in 2018 had made its first-ever rocket, Vikram-S launched on the 18th of November from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)- maintained Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, off the coast of Andhra Pradesh. This rocket was paired with 3D-printed engines designed and built in India by Skyroot. It reached a peak altitude of 89.5 km, which was comparatively higher than the altitude targeted, which was only 80km. This rocket didn’t carry any actual payloads, rather was attached to three mock ones.
What makes Skyroot Aerospace special?
Highlighting the project ‘Prarambh’, which translates to ‘Beginning ‘in Hindi, marked the success of India's private space technology sector to make its way into outer space, thereby “opening space to all ''. The amalgamation of organisations like Skyroot, ISRO, and the Space Regulator IN-SPACE made this mission a success.
With this, the Department of Space had signed the first-ever agreement with Skyroot, which stated to provide access to ISRO’s facilities and proficiency for testing the subsystems and systems of the launch vehicles. Thus, Skyroot Aerospace has been able to become the first Indian startup to achieve its formal agreement with ISRO, for getting access to its assets. This had been possible because of the announcement made by the Government of India in May 2020, stating the new policy decision where the finance minister had provided access to the space sector and ISROs facilities for private organisations, such as Skyroot.
Moreover, Skyroot encourages young talents who are passionate about technologies and outer-space, and who tend to offer job opportunities in their organisation to become a part of their building teams and missions.
