Skyroot Aerospace raises 51 million dollars, the highest ever funding for an Indian space-tech start-up
With India growing into one of the major start-up hubs in the world, it comes as no surprise that its popular space-tech start-up called Skyroot Aerospace recently raised USD 51 million (approximately INR 403 crore) as part of its Series-B financing. This is by far the highest ever funding accumulated by any Indian space-tech start-up. Now for those who are wondering what a Series-B financing is, it simply refers to the capital-raising process of a start-up, more specifically the third stage of start-up financing and the second stage of venture capital financing.
Notably, this recent funding venture was led by Singapore-based long-term investment firm GIC. This comes right amidst the Indian government’s major thrust into the space sector by opening it up to private sector players, such as Skyroot Aerospace. In fact, the official of this pioneering commercial space-tech start-up believe that this funding will further up their game in the field of space technology.
Skyroot Aerospace: A bird’s eye view
For those unaware, Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited is a Hyderabad-based private aerospace manufacturer and commercial launch service provider. It was founded in 2018 by former ISRO engineer-scientist duo Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharat Daka. It primarily focusses on developing small lift launch vehicles suitable for driving the international small satellite market. In fact, currently, Skyroot Aerospace is busy pioneering India’s first privately developed modular space launch vehicles deemed as Vikram series, named after Founder and Father of the Indian Space Programme Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. This flagship Vikram series of launch vehicles is designed, developed and manufactured by Skyroot and is part of their ‘Open Space for All’ mission. It is further overseen by the Indian Space Research Organisation.
Interestingly, this private space start-up is the only one to share a Memorandum of Understanding with the national space agency for sharing facilities and expertise and even aims to launch an estimated 20000 small satellites in the coming decade.
Introducing the Vikram Series rockets
If you keep close tabs on space news, you would know that earlier this year, the first rocket from the Vikram series called Vikram-I had a successful full duration test launch and is all set to make the final launch to space by the end of 2022. In case you didn’t know, the speciality of Vikram series launch vehicles are their all-carbon-fibre structure, solid fuelled tank, novel thermal protection system and carbon ablative nozzle. They are also equipped with a payload capacity of 800 kilograms in the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) and deployed with three-tiered propulsion technologies. Needless to say, these are all custom-designed to deliver best performance, apart from being suitable for mass production and easy affordability.
As for Vikram I, it has a low-cost payload capacity of 480 kg and can reach 500 km into the LEO, while its successors Vikram II and Vikram III have payload capacities of 595 kg and 815 kg respectively with similar reaching ability. Moreover, Vikram I takes only 24 hours to be assembled and launched from any launch site, while its siblings take 72 hours.
Besides the flagship Vikram series, the 4-year-old Skyroot Aerospace has also successfully built and tested India’s first privately developed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid and solid fuel-based rocket engines as well as various R&D production facilities extensively used in 3D printing technologies.