The Ride To The Moon

As India joins the scramble for a berth in outer space, BW Businessworld takes a close look at ISRO’s aspirational ventures and the nascent startup ecosystem on space research and exploration

- Manish Kumar Jha

IN 2017 THE INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANISATION (ISRO) floated a tender calling for private sector participation in building a satellite for the first time. “It was not a large number, there were all of 59 companies in the room. We counted,” recalls Exseed Fund Founder and Managing Partner Mahesh Murthy. At the end of the meeting with private sector bidders, ISRO chose three partners, Exseed among them. The other two companies that bagged the ISRO tender were the public sector Bharat Electronics and Tata Advanced Systems, a large outsourcing company.

“But things have changed in the two years since,” says Murthy. And that — despite the fact that investment in space exploration and expedition is really like betting on the abyss of space. If the venture works, the investor gets to become a part of history and begins a tryst with next-generation technology. If it does not, some hard-earned money flows into a black hole.

India’s prowess in space technology is exceptional, as ISRO demonstrated with its Chandrayaan-2 mission. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLVMkIII-M1), dubbed Baahubali, lifted-off from the second launch pad at the spaceport and successfully placed the 3,850-kg Chandrayaan-2 into the earth’s orbit. Since the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into an elliptical low earth orbit in 1957, more than 8,650 objects have been launched into space.