India eyes spot in space race as Skyroot prepares for the country's first private launch

Skyroot Aerospace, a billion dollar startup based in Hyderabad is about to launch the first privately developed orbital rocket ever from Indian soil. Between July 12 and August 4, 2026, its Vikram-1 rocket will be launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The flight is called Mission Aagaman (meaning “the arrival” in Sanskrit). It is a demonstrative mission designed to gather real-time performance data that ground simulations would not be able to provide. These include acoustic vibration measurements, thermal stress during supersonic ascent, and stage separation dynamics, according to Jagran Josh. 

The rocket will also carry payloads from both Indian startups and international customers.

What Vikram-1 is built to do

Vikram-1 is about seven stories tall and uses an all-carbon composite airframe to reduce structural weight. 

The rocket has four stages. The first three use Skyroot’s Kalam-series solid-fuel motors, and the fourth stage is powered by a liquid-fuel engine called Raman-I, according to Jagran Josh. Vikram-1 can deliver up to 350 kg to low Earth orbit or 260 kg to a sun-synchronous polar orbit.

The rocket is named for Vikram Sarabhai, who is widely considered the father of India’s space program. Skyroot has replaced heavier metal structures with carbon composites and uses 3D-printed engine parts. This approach is intended to enable high-frequency manufacturing and reduce the cost of each launch.

Co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana, who previously worked at ISRO, told Bloomberg that Skyroot plans to conduct more test launches before starting commercial operations. The company has raised funding from GIC and BlackRock to support this campaign, according to the Economic Times.

A private sector three years in the making

Skyroot is one of about 400 startups registered with the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre, which was set up after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the space sector to private companies in 2020.

Skyroot is not the only Indian startup reaching new milestones. GalaxEye Space Solutions (based in Bengaluru and backed by Infosys) successfully launched the world’s first satellite combining optical cameras with radar sensors via a SpaceX Falcon 9 on May 3, with plans to grow its fleet to 10 satellites over the next three years. 

Another competitor, Pixxel Space, supported by Google and Lightspeed, provides hyperspectral imaging data to clients such as NASA, Rio Tinto, and India’s Ministry of Agriculture.

India’s space sector now includes about 260 startups that have raised a total of $730 million in funding. Around a quarter of that investment has come in the past year.

Pawan Goenka, the automotive industry veteran who chairs India’s space authorization agency, told Bloomberg that making Indian companies adopt space technology domestically remains a key challenge. 

“We are becoming more aggressive in the kind of technology that we are able to transfer from ISRO because we now see the ability of the private sector to absorb this technology and take it forward,” Goenka said.

Scale gap with SpaceX remains vast

India’s private space sector has big ambitions, but the gap with established players is still pretty big. SpaceX invested over $11 billion in three years to expand its Starlink constellation beyond 10,000 satellites and completed a $75 billion IPO in June, which later increased to $85.7 billion after underwriters exercised a greenshoe option, according to BBC.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 completed 165 missions in 2025, which is more than the rest of the world combined. By comparison, India’s government space agency ISRO has carried out 105 launches in total since 1979.

Goenka acknowledged the gap. “Frankly, we are late to the party, and the US is now more private sector than government in terms of the overall space economy,” he told Bloomberg.

How does India plan to catch up? 

On June 21, India’s government published a Press Information Bureau backgrounder detailing upcoming programs. These include the Gaganyaan crewed spaceflight, a plan for a national space station by 2035, and a target for a crewed lunar landing by 2040. 

Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms is considering a low-orbit satellite constellation of over 1,600 satellites that could compete with Starlink in India.

For now, the immediate question is whether Vikram-1 will reach orbit within its launch window. If successful, India will join a small group of countries where private companies are able to launch payloads into space.

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