With the launch of Indian Space Association (ISpA), a private industry body to boost Space technology in India by collaborating with ISRO and other agencies, the Government of India has paved the way to work on capacity building and Space economic hubs and incubators in India.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the government will no longer act as a handler for the Space sector, but will instead perform the role of an enabler. In his address at the launch, PM Modi highlighted the four pillars of Indian Space reforms:
· Freedom of Innovation to Private Sector
· Role of government as an enabler
· Preparing youth for future
· Space sector as resource for common man’s progress
Also Read: PM Modi launches Indian Space Association to boost private sector participation
Over the last one year, the Government of India has announced a number of policy measures to support private players’ participation and amplify innovation in the Indian Space sector. ISpA plans to empower not just established private players but startups as well, which is why in the last panel discussion, eminent startups participated to share their thoughts as well as their future plans.
Investment in Indian space start-ups:
Over 50 new startups have come up in India in the last five years that are offering space related products or services and together, they have raised over $100m in investment. Ravinder Pal Singh, Partner, Kalaari Capital said, “Access to space facilities is opening up humongous in India. Access to early stage capital is not there to the extent which we would like to be. I hope that happens and I think once that happens, then this pivotal question of whether the growth capital should come out of India or not, will happen. Growth capital, I agree is a huge constraint in investment culture or community.”
Launch services:
With a second spaceport coming into place and new generation startups looking to have their own launch vehicles, India can be a global hub for launching small satellites.
Also Read: Opportunities for the Indian Space industry
Space applications:
There is tremendous opportunity to increase productivity and modernize supply chains using Space as a technology backbone. Sunil Indurti, Director at the Azista-BST Aerospace explains that the joint venture between Azista Industries and Berlin Space Technologies GmbH has undertaken an endeavor to mass produce satellites in India and is putting together a facility that can produce 200 to 250 satellites a year.
Indurti said, “By next year’s fourth quarter, we plan to launch our first demonstration satellite, and through this mission we want to demonstrate the capability of our factory to provide an end to end solution, because we are going to manufacture all the subsystems of the satellites in this facility and will also do the complete system assembly integration, testing, as well as satellite operations.”
“By doing all this, we want to showcase our ability at the factory in order to provide complete solutions to customers for which we’ve been interacting with a number of them over the past couple of years. We aim to impact a couple of local applications like agriculture and we are working closely with about 500 farmers. By utilizing our hydrometeorology sensors, we have been sharing soil moisture data and local weather data using our automatic weather station,” added Indurti.
Making in India for the world:
Developing state of technology locally in India to service requirements of the global market and occupying the share of it.
