Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian Space-Tech startup has successfully raised US$51 million (INR 403 Crore) Series-B financing round. This is the largest funding round ever in the Indian Space-Tech sector.
GIC, which is one of the most established investors in India, led the funding round. Mayank Rawat, Managing Director of GIC India Direct Investment Group will be joining Skyroot Aerospace Board.
The fresh round of funding follows the Indian government’s major thrust to the space sector by opening it up to private sector players including startups and encouraging private investments into the sector.
This investment further validates Skyroot’s strengths in space technology and boosts its capabilities to tap into trillion-dollar space business opportunities. The company plans to cater to the burgeoning demand from the international small satellite market.
Skyroot Aerospace is pioneering India’s first privately developed space launch vehicles. The flagship Vikram series of launch vehicles, named after the founder of India’s space program – Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Vikram Series rockets are uniquely built with an all-carbon-fiber structure, can launch upto 800 kg of payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
Skyroot is the first startup to sign an MoU with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for sharing facilities and expertise.
“We are proud to welcome one of the world’s leading institutional investors as a long-term partner in our mission to ‘Open Space for All’. This round puts us on a trajectory of hyper-growth by funding all of our initial developmental launches, and enables building infrastructure to meet high launch cadence required by our satellite customers”, says Pawan Kumar Chandana, Co-Founder and CEO of Skyroot.
“Our objective is to establish ourselves as a provider of best-in-class rocket launch services and the go-to destination for affordable and reliable small satellite launches”, he adds.
“We have validated all three propulsion technologies in our Vikram space launch vehicles, and completed a full duration test of one of our rocket stages in May’22. We are also planning a demonstrator launch to space this year. This round will help us get to full-fledged commercial satellite launch scale within a year from now. We have started booking payload slots for our upcoming launches.”, says Naga Bharath Daka, Co-Founder and COO of Skyroot.
Rothschild & Co India are the financial advisors for this funding round. The added fund will help expand the world class space engineering team which currently has close to 200 employees with a cumulative experience of 1000+ years in the rocket industry.
The company has already completed critical milestones towards the development of its commercial Space launch vehicles. With this round, Skyroot has expanded its marquee shareholder base including Myntra & CultFit founder Mukesh Bansal, Greenko Group founders (Anil Chalamalasetty & Mahesh Kolli), Solar Industries India Limited, Google board member Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo Ventures, Neeraj Arora (Former-WhatsApp Global Business Chief), Wami Capital and others from past funding rounds.
The 4-year-old Skyroot Aerospace has successfully built and tested India’s first privately developed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid, and solid fuel-based rocket engines; the
R&D and production activities extensively use advanced composite and 3D-printing technologies.
According to a recent market survey, the global space launch services market is projected to grow from $14.21 billion in 2022 to $31.90 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 12.25% in forecast period.
