Before Chennai became a city of multinational firms, Global Capability Centres, semiconductor ambitions, aerospace and defence majors, automobile giants, footwear factories, startups and home grown firms, it was Madras — a city whose business story was already taking shape several centuries ago. From a colonial trading centre to a manufacturing hub and now a diversified global business destination, the city has repeatedly reinvented itself.

Business really mattered to Madras. The industrial development of the Madras Presidency was a matter of serious concern and in 1899, a whole time officer (later Sir) Alfred Chatterton who was then with the College of Engineering, Guindy, was appointed to stimulate industrial technical education in the region, according to details documented in a coffee table book titled Championing Enterprise – 175 years of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The government decided to create a department to survey existing industries and investigate the possibility of creating new ones, it said.

“Trade came first. From Fort St. George in 1639, Madras shipped rather than made — cotton piece goods, indigo, hides. The artificial harbour of the 1880s turned an open roadstead into a working port, and that decision still explains where our industry sits. Then factories. Binny’s Buckingham Mill in 1876 and the Carnatic Mill in 1881 employed tens of thousands at Perambur. Parry moved from trading into sugar and chemicals. Simpson began coach building in 1840,” said Deepak Jacob, Managing Director and CEO of Guidance the nodal agency instrumental in bringing investments into Tamil Nadu.

“Trade built the port. The port brought the mills. The mills and the PSUs built the engineering base. That base brought the automakers, and the automakers brought electronics. What we build now is not for the investor in front of us. It is for the one who arrives in 2045,” he added.

Long before Chennai became known as the Detroit of India, Madras was already laying the foundations for the automotive sector. The first car to arrive in Madras was in the early 1900s. Simpson’s, the city’s famed coach builders then, played a role in this. In 1948, Madras had become home to automotive pioneers such as Standard Motor Products of India and Ashok Leyland (Ashok Motors), while Enfield India began two-wheeler manufacturing in 1956. Today, Chennai is home to several leading automobile companies, including TVS Motor Company.

Chennai has also embraced the electric-vehicle revolution, with several companies entering the EV space and adding a new dimension to the city’s automotive story.

Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd (TAFE), headquartered in Chennai, is another interesting chapter in the city’s business story. India’s second largest tractor manufacturer, TAFE is led by Mallika Srinivasan, one of the few prominent women business leaders in the city, who has significantly expanded the company through strategic acquisitions and expansions across geographies.

The Madras Rubber Factory, known as MRF, began its journey in Madras as a small toy-balloon manufacturer and went on to become one of India’s largest tyre makers. Business conglomerates such as Murugappa Group, Sanmar Group, India Cements were all headquartered in Madras and expanding their businesses. Banks, too, joined the race. Indian Bank began its journey in Madras in 1907, followed by Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) in 1937. “Madras built its banks before its factory base, which was part of why services took root here so easily later,” Mr. Jacob said.

In 1958, Madras opened the Guindy Industrial Estate, one of India’s first industrial estates alongside Delhi’s Okhla. And the first phase was inaugurated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Then came the IT revolution and the multinationals. “While much of the growth was led by home-grown companies, the participation of multinationals was largely through joint ventures and other forms of partnerships. It was only in the post liberalisation era that multinationals made a beeline for Chennai,” Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, Partner, Catalincs and former CMD, Cognizant India.

“Some of the biggest names in global business such as Ford, Cognizant, St. Gobain, and Hyundai made Chennai their home. This was followed by a flurry of investments by companies from across the globe. Examples include Caterpillar, Standard Chartered, Grundfos, Danfoss, Yamaha, Renault-Nissan, IBM, Accenture, BMW, World Bank, and Cap Gemini,” he added.

In the last two decades, Chennai has added a new chapter to its business story — startups. Once known primarily for factories, automobiles, and manufacturing, the city is now know as the SaaS (Software as a Service) hub. Chennai now has 5,134 startups, according to StartupTN. The IIT-Madras ecosystem has created a new generation of entrepreneurs, while the IIT-Madras Research Park has become a hotbed for innovation, deep tech and ideas moving from the lab to the market.

IIT-Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC) began in 2013, at a time when “deep tech” was not a popular word, its Chief Executive Officer Tamaswati Ghosh said. She narrated that in the early days they were questioned how startups were staying with them. The answer came in the form of companies such as Ather Energy, which, despite eventually moving to Karnataka, became one of the early poster boys of Chennai’s startup ecosystem. Uniphore showed that founders need not be from Chennai to build here; its founders adopted the city and built the company from here, she pointed out.

Then came Agnikul, putting Chennai on the map for space tech innovation. In the past decade, Chennai has attracted several Global Capability Centers (GCCs). According to estimates, the city has over 300 GCCs. Logistics firms like Hapag Lloyd and United Parcel Service have chosen Chennai.

The least discussed of the new sectors is animation, VFX, and gaming. Phantom FX, Basilic Fly, Knack Studios, and BOT VFX are already here, hiring on a diploma rather than a doctorate. The AVGC-XR Policy 2026 targets two lakh jobs by 2030.

Chennai in 2030

“With Chennai having emerged as the data science hub of India with prominent pure-play analytics companies such as Latentview, Tiger, Tredence, Fractal, Crayon Data, and MathCo establishing their operations in the city, I expect significant AI innovation to happen from the city at the intersection of multiple domains and data analytics,” Mr. Ramamoorthy said.

He then added that while existing industries will continue to grow and thrive, the biggest drivers of growth and employment will come from GCCs, NBFCs, electronics, defence manufacturing, renewable energy, tourism (including medical tourism), and from MSMEs and new-age startups in areas such as fintech, healthtech, deeptech, spacetech, among others. “We will see companies in these new age sectors make significant investments in R&D and intellectual property, which should augur well for the state in improving its per capita income,” he noted.

“The base stays. In 2030 Chennai is still an automotive, electronics, and services city, and GCCs remain its highest-wage employer. What changes is where Chennai sits in the value chain. Today the design decision, the IP and the margin often sit elsewhere while we do the making. Closing that gap is the work,” Mr. Jacob added. Madras laid the foundation and Chennai is building what comes next.

Agnikul Cosmos successfully test launches the Agnibaan rocket powered by the world’s first single-piece 3D printed semi-cryogenic engine from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, in Sriharikota.
| Photo Credit: ANI

After the successful test-flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD, Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos is hoping to start launching satellites early next year.

In an interview with PTI, Agnikul co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Srinath Ravichandran said the 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines and the rocket will offer quick turnaround for customers who will be able to have customised launch vehicles for their satellites.

“Nine to 12 months I would say. Probably by the end of this financial year or the early part of the next financial year is what we are targeting,” Mr. Ravichandran said when asked about the commercial orbital launch of the Agnibaan rocket.

The first test flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD (suborbital technology demonstrator) on May 30, which lasted for 66 seconds, came after four unsuccessful attempts.

“It was a big sense of relief. I think we got a lot of learning in differentiating between building a vehicle and launching a vehicle,” said Mr. Ravichandran, whose idea to use 3D printing technology to build engines and rockets led to Agnikul Cosmos, a space sector start-up incubated at the IIT Madras Research Park in 2017.

The other co-founders were Moin SPM, an operations specialist and Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, a professor at IIT Madras and Head of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development.

Women engineers Saraniya Periaswamy, the Vehicle Director for Agnibaan SOrTeD and Umamaheswari. K, the Project Director of the first Mission played a key role in the test flight.

Agnibaan SOrTeD was a vertical ascent flight unlike sounding rockets that are launched using guiding rails placed at a particular angle.

“Seven seconds after lift-off we checked the health of the vehicle and that is when the auto-pilot kicked in. Little bit into the flight, it started moving over the ocean and performed the pitch-over manoeuvre and then continued on its planned trajectory,” Ravichandran said, sharing details of Agnibaan SOrTeD’s maiden flight.

“Once it reached about 60 seconds or so, we entered the wind biasing manoeuvre, where we solve the wind speed and actually fly into the wind so there is not much wind load on the vehicle,” he said.

After the wind-biasing manoeuvre, the rocket continued to fly till burnout and dropped back into the ocean.

“There was continuous radar tracking of the vehicle. All the devices and instruments enabling that also worked really well,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

The next steps for Agnikul is to master the technology of firing multiple engines together and carry out tests for stage separation.

“We will have to figure out two things. Our orbital rocket has multiple engines fired together. So, that will have to be tested out on the ground. And the stage separation. SOrTeD was a single stage vehicle. The orbital vehicle will have two stages. So stage separation has to be tested,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

“We are already in the middle of building rigs at our facility. We will take six-seven months to get that and from there we will be able to target the orbital mission in the next three months,” he said.

According to Mr. Ravichandran, the demand for small satellites was high with as many as 30-35 tonnes of payloads put in low earth orbits every year.

He said small satellites have a low life-span and the same need to be replenished for continued earth-imaging or communications applications.

The Agnibaan launch vehicle is designed to be compatible with the mobile launchpad called Dhanush and can be configured to accommodate payloads ranging from 30 kg to 300 kg, ensuring versatility across a wide range of mission requirements.

Agnikul Cosmos successfully test launches the Agnibaan rocket powered by the world’s first single-piece 3D printed semi-cryogenic engine from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, in Sriharikota.
| Photo Credit: ANI

After the successful test-flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD, Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos is hoping to start launching satellites early next year.

In an interview with PTI, Agnikul co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Srinath Ravichandran said the 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines and the rocket will offer quick turnaround for customers who will be able to have customised launch vehicles for their satellites.

“Nine to 12 months I would say. Probably by the end of this financial year or the early part of the next financial year is what we are targeting,” Mr. Ravichandran said when asked about the commercial orbital launch of the Agnibaan rocket.

The first test flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD (suborbital technology demonstrator) on May 30, which lasted for 66 seconds, came after four unsuccessful attempts.

“It was a big sense of relief. I think we got a lot of learning in differentiating between building a vehicle and launching a vehicle,” said Mr. Ravichandran, whose idea to use 3D printing technology to build engines and rockets led to Agnikul Cosmos, a space sector start-up incubated at the IIT Madras Research Park in 2017.

The other co-founders were Moin SPM, an operations specialist and Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, a professor at IIT Madras and Head of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development.

Women engineers Saraniya Periaswamy, the Vehicle Director for Agnibaan SOrTeD and Umamaheswari. K, the Project Director of the first Mission played a key role in the test flight.

Agnibaan SOrTeD was a vertical ascent flight unlike sounding rockets that are launched using guiding rails placed at a particular angle.

“Seven seconds after lift-off we checked the health of the vehicle and that is when the auto-pilot kicked in. Little bit into the flight, it started moving over the ocean and performed the pitch-over manoeuvre and then continued on its planned trajectory,” Ravichandran said, sharing details of Agnibaan SOrTeD’s maiden flight.

“Once it reached about 60 seconds or so, we entered the wind biasing manoeuvre, where we solve the wind speed and actually fly into the wind so there is not much wind load on the vehicle,” he said.

After the wind-biasing manoeuvre, the rocket continued to fly till burnout and dropped back into the ocean.

“There was continuous radar tracking of the vehicle. All the devices and instruments enabling that also worked really well,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

The next steps for Agnikul is to master the technology of firing multiple engines together and carry out tests for stage separation.

“We will have to figure out two things. Our orbital rocket has multiple engines fired together. So, that will have to be tested out on the ground. And the stage separation. SOrTeD was a single stage vehicle. The orbital vehicle will have two stages. So stage separation has to be tested,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

“We are already in the middle of building rigs at our facility. We will take six-seven months to get that and from there we will be able to target the orbital mission in the next three months,” he said.

According to Mr. Ravichandran, the demand for small satellites was high with as many as 30-35 tonnes of payloads put in low earth orbits every year.

He said small satellites have a low life-span and the same need to be replenished for continued earth-imaging or communications applications.

The Agnibaan launch vehicle is designed to be compatible with the mobile launchpad called Dhanush and can be configured to accommodate payloads ranging from 30 kg to 300 kg, ensuring versatility across a wide range of mission requirements.

Agnibaan SubOrbital Technological Demonstrator (SOrTeD), vehicle is seen at Agnikul’s Launchpad at Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, November 28, 2022.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

India’s Agnikul Cosmos called off a test flight of its first rocket on Tuesday seconds before it was due to launch – the fourth such cancellation in the last three months.

Launches of India’s second privately built rocket, and first using a combination of gas and liquid fuel, had been aborted three times before because of technical issues, including one flight that was cancelled about 90 seconds before lift-off.

The launch, scheduled for 5:45 a.m. IST (0015 GMT) on Tuesday, was first delayed less than six minutes before lift-off “due to a technical glitch in the countdown activities”, and officials set a new lift-off time of 9:25 a.m.

Only five seconds before lift-off, however, the launch was put on “temporary hold to check igniter performance”, then was called off altogether.

The mission was expected to last two minutes and test the new “semi-cryogenic” engine and 3D-printed parts. If successful, it would have represented a technological step for India, whose Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has not yet successfully flown a semi-cryogenic engine, which uses a mix of liquid and gas for propellant.

Agnikul Cosmos’ Agnibaan rocket is a customisable, 2-stage launch vehicle that can take up to 300 kg (about 660 lb) of payload to orbits about 700 km in altitude (435 miles), the company said. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy can put up to 63,500 kgs to low Earth orbit.

India’s first privately developed rocket, from the company Skyroot, was flown from ISRO’s launch site in 2022.

Founded in 2017, Agnikul – whose name is derived from the Hindi and Sanskrit word for fire – runs the country’s first private launchpad and mission control centre, while ISRO operates all other launchpads.

The story so far: As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) forays further into space with missions to the sun and the moon, with space telescopes, landers, and astronauts, the nation’s space sector is also expanding beyond ISRO. With the Centre allowing 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the space sector, the industry’s private players are eyeing a boost in funding from overseas companies and investors.

Since ISRO’s founding in 1969, several state-owned firms like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Antrix Corporation, and private companies like Godrej Aerospace, Ananth Technologies, and Larsen & Toubro have helped it manufacture rockets, satellites, and other space components for ISRO. However, the boost to the Indian private space sector came in 2020 when the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) was established to promote, authorise and supervise various space activities of non-governmental entities (NGEs).

Here is a look at India’s private space sector, the companies involved, laws promoting it and ISRO’s role.

 History of ISRO’s commercialisation

Early partners of ISRO include Data Patterns, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), Larsen & Toubro, and Godrej Aerospace, which helped manufacture auxiliary components. While production of launch vehicles, satellites, spacecrafts, and boosters was mainly handled by ISRO (in-house or in collaboration with international partners), these companies helped fabricate spacecraft components, satellite systems, ground stations, satellite and ground station control systems, rocket engines, and communication systems

In 1992, the Department of Space (DoS) spun off Antrix Corporation Ltd., a wholly government-owned company under ISRO’s administrative control, to promote, market and deliver commercial products of ISRO to international companies. Antrix is the conduit between ISRO and its private industry partners to facilitate technology transfer, assess financial and commercial viability of joint ventures and develop the industrial capabilities of the Indian space sector.

Some of its core tasks are:

1. Providing satellite communication services via the Indian National Satellite system (INSAT)
2. Providing launch services for commercial satellites aboard ISRO’s polar and geosynchronous satellite launch vehicles – PSLV, GSLV and GSLV Mk-III for foreign customers.
3. Providing data from the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite to international users,
4. Building and delivering satellites and satellite sub-systems
5. Provide technical consultancy and facilitate transfer of ISRO’s technologies

While Antrix has been launching foreign commercial satellites using ISRO’s PSLV since 1999, a major boost to these launch services occurred in September 2016 when the PSLV C-37 successfully injected 104 satellites into orbit in a single launch – the highest so far.

Turning its focus to India’s domestic space industry, in 2019, the Centre established NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) – a public sector undertaking run by the DoS, to boost indigenous production of various ISRO space products by the industry consortium. Like Antrix, NSIL too is a commercial arm of ISRO, offering launch services, building satellites and subsystems, remote sensing services, technology transfer and producing small and polar satellite launch vehicles in collaboration with Indian space/defence companies. While Antrix caters to ISRO’s foreign partners, NSIL focuses on its domestic customers.

Private players involved & their role

Older aerospace companies like HAL, Godrej Aerospace, Ananth Technologies, and Data Patterns catered mainly to manufacturing space components for ISRO. HAL provides structural parts of several space components, like heat shield assembly, nose cone assembly, fuel propellant tanks, and cryogenic engines for launch vehicles. Godrej Aerospace manufactures Liquid propulsion engines, complex fabricated assemblies for antennas, pods, satellite thrusters, actuators, valves, and pumps.

Technological firms like Ananth and Data Patterns are the core manufacturers of ISRO’s ground stations, nano satellites, automated test equipment, printed circuit boards (PCB) for various controllers (digital, analog, radio or microwave frequency, laser,power), sub-systems of satellites – telemetry, communications, altitude & orbital control units, sensors, payloads, launch vehicle control units for navigation, power, stage integration, servo controls and inertial sensors.

However, independent and dedicated space companies dealing in manufacturing and offering launch services began much later as Centre rolled out dedicated schemes and budgetary allocations for start-ups.

Start-ups began to take root in India in the early 2010s with the first space start-up, Dhruva Space Private Limited, being established in 2012 in Hyderabad. Soon after, several other space start-ups cropped up in India: Bellatrix Aerospace (2015), Aadyah Aerospace (2016), AgniKul Cosmos (2017), Manastu Space (2017), Skyroot Aerospace (2018), Satellize (2018), and Pixxel (2019), to name a few. As of date, over 200 space start-ups are registered in the country, attracting investments worth ₹1000 crore in 2023 itself.

Most of these companies are involved in designing and manufacturing satellites, launch vehicles, ground stations, propulsion systems, propellants,and satellite subsystems and offer launch services using ISRO’s PSLV/GSLV or private launch vehicles. Several companies also manufacture technological systems for control, monitoring, tracking and geospatial activities. A few companies like Skyroot and Agnikul Cosmos are involved in manufacturing their own satellite launch vehicles. Manastu Space is one of the only companies involved in green-technology for space — offering alternative fuel for boosters, refuelling stations in space, deorbiting expired satellites.

Here’s a closer look at a few space start-ups.

Dhruva Space

Based in Hyderabad, Dhruva Space was founded by Sanjay Nekkanti in 2012 to design customised satellites, ground stations and launch services from ground or space. With 80-odd members, Dhruva Space manufactures satellites for missions in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond, orbital deployers (a system to launch small satellites/payloads), ground stations, antennas and space operations command system – a module which monitors, controls, tracks satellites, and payloads remotely. It also offers launch services for satellites from the ground via launch vehicles and from the International Space Station (ISS) using orbital deployers, as well as customised payloads.

Dhruva Space’s indigenously developed 1U, 3U and 6U Satellite orbital deployers have been successfully tested and launched in ISRO’s PSLV missions in 2022 in 2023, after being authorised by IN-SPACe. The company is also currently building a 2.8 lakh square-foot spacecraft manufacturing facility in Hyderabad after closing its third round of seed funding, which raised ₹22 crores in October 2021 via institutional investors like Indian Angel Network and Blue Ashva Capital.

Skyroot

Skyroot was founded in 2018 by Pawan Chandana and Bharat Daka in Hyderabad and specialises in manufacturing space launch vehicles. In 2020, the company became the first private Indian start-up to successfully test liquid propulsion engines as well as a 3D printed cryogenic engine. It has test-fired its own rockets Vikram-S and Vikram-I. In November 2022, it launched India’s first private rocket, Vikram-S, from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh on a suborbital flight.

Currently, the company is developing and testingthree space vehicles Vikram -I, II, and III, rocket engine Raman–1 and rocket motors Kalam-5, Kalam-100 and Kalam-250. Skyroot has at least four launches planned in 2024 and has raised ₹250 crores in its pre-Series C funding round led by investor Temasek in 2023.

Agnikul Cosmos

Similar to Skyroot, Agnikul Cosmos, a start-up manufacturing space launch vehicles, was incubated at the Indian Institute of Madras by Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM in 2017. After testing its single-piece 3D printed engine Agnilet in 2022, it also inaugurated India’s first private mobile launchpad ‘Dhanush’ and the Agnikul mission control center at Sriharikota in the same year. Due to its mobility, ‘Dhanush’ is launch location-agnostic (can be set up at any launch site) and will be used to test fire its transportable launch vehicle Agnibaan, which can deploy small satellites to Low Earth Orbits.

Partnering with ISRO for technology support, the Chennai-based start-up raised $11 million in Series A round funding from several institutional and angel investors and shortly after opened the Agnikul Rocket Factory– 1 at IIT Research Park. After cancelling its scheduled launch on March 22, the company is currently working on a new launch date and time for its Agnibaan rocket for a sub-orbital flight demonstration.

Manastu Space

Founded by Tushar Jadhav and Ashtesh Kumar in 2017, the Mumbai-based space start up Manastu Space specialises in green technology for space. It manufactures green propulsion systems using hydrogen peroxide-based rocket fuel for satellites, and debris collision avoidance systems for CubeSats (nanosatellites using standardised size and form factor – 1U, 3U etc) named Vyom 1U and 2U. It also offers in-space services like refuelling satellites via fuel stations in space, extending life spans of satellites which have gone out of control and removing used/expired satellites from orbits to reduce space debris.

As of date, Manastu has signed two deals for its propulsion systems – with UK-based Black Arrow Space Technologies and French satellite firm Venture Orbital systems. In 2023, Manastu Space raised $3 million in pre-Series A round funding led by the Indian Angel Network.

 Indian regulatory framework for private space companies

On May 16, 2020, in the fourth ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ stimulus worth ₹20 lakh crores Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamanannounced the creation of IN-SPACe to allow the private sector to benefit from ISRO’s assets including testing centres, launch site, technologies, and launch vehicles. Ms. Sitharaman also unveiled a new liberal geo-spatial data policy and opened up planetary exploration and outer space travel to private companies.

IN-SPACe

IN-SPACe was set up as a single-window, independent, nodal agency to authorise, promote and supervise space activities of private non-governmental entities. The agency will overlook NGEs’ activities such as building launch vehicles, satellites, sharing infrastructure and premises under ISRO/DoS control and establishment of new facilities and infrastructure. It also monitors and evaluates proposals from NGEs and issues authorisations for space activities such as launches and test firing. IN-SPACe also provides technical incubation for start-ups in their infancy and promotes space tourism, facilitates the start-up ecosystem and boosts student participation. Since its establishment, IN-SPACe has signed 45 Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with NGEs to support them in space activities.

National Geospatial Policy

In February 2021, Centre issued guidelines for private companies to acquire all geospatial data and maps from government agencies without licences, and permission or clearances for collection, use and dissemination, except certain categories. Geospatial data is information about objects, events or phenomena that occur on a location on earth’s surface indentified by latitude and longitude co-ordinates.

Building on these guidelines, the Centre also unveiled the National Geospatial Policy on December 28, 2022, laying down a framework for the development of a geospatial ecosystem, allowing democratisation of data and a strengthened integrated interface for all digital data that have location. The policy also promotes private sector participation in collection of geospatial data, allowing the Survey of India to maintain high resolution/high spatial accuracy orthoimagery (geometrically corrected image to remove distortions).

Indian Space Policy

Strengthening the private space sector in India by finally providing a legislative framework, the Centre rolled out the Indian Space Policy on April 20, 2023. This policy permits NGEs to:

• Offer communication, internet services, remote sensing and navigation services via self-owned, procured or leased satellites
• Operate ground facilities for space operations such as telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C)
• Use of Indian or non-Indian orbital resources to establish communication satellites
• Manufacture and operate space transportation systems such as launch vehicles and shuttles including reusable, recoverable and reconfigurable versions of these transports.
• Commercial recovery of an asteroid or space resource

The policy has paved the way for ISRO to transition from manufacturing operational space systems to a focus on research and development in advanced technologies.

Amended FDI policy

On February 21, 2024, Centre amended its FDI policy, allowing up to 74% FDI for satellite manufacturing and operation, up to 49% FDI for launch vehicles, spaceports and associated systems and 100% FDI to manufacture components and systems/sub-systems for satellites, ground and user segments. Beyond the above mentioned limits investment is allowed in these segments via the government route.

ISRO’s role – then & now

With the opening up of the sector and the above-mentioned slew of reforms, the Centre aims to boost Indian space economy from its current worth of $8 billion (2% of global space economy) to $100 billion by 2040. Since 2020, start-ups have successfully launched their own satellites, sub-orbital launch vehicle and also established a portable launchpad and a private mission control centre within the ISRO campus.

Despite the increased participation of private companies in the Indian space sector, ISRO remains its driving force. As of 2023, ISRO has launched 424 foreign satellites since the 1990s, of which 389 were launched since 2014 generating $174 million from foreign satellite launches and £256 million from European satellite launches. With scheduled missions to moon, sun, mars, deep space explorations and several satellite launches, ISRO will continue to lead the sector – albeit partnering with start-ups for manufacturing smaller subsystems.