Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited is an Indian private aerospace manufacturer and commercial launch service provider headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana. The company was founded by former engineers and scientists from ISRO. It aims to develop and launch its own series of expandable small-lift launch vehicles especially crafted for the small satellite market.
Incubated in T-Hub and supported by T-Works, Skyroot Aerospace is India's first rocket launching private company.
History
Skyroot Aerospace was formed in July 2018 by former ISRO scientists Pawan Kumar Chandana, Naga Bharath Daka through the support of Vasudevan Gnanagandhi as well as a small group of entrepreneurs including CureFit founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagor. Skyroot has initially raised million, including from space and defence contractor Solar Industries. The company has been developing its first launch vehicle, the 'Vikram 1', which is on track for its initial launch around the end of 2022.
On 6 October 2020, the National Startup Awards 2020 were declared by the Union minister of commerce and industry Piyush Goyal, where Skyroot Aerospace emerged as the winner. The National Startup Awards are given in recognition of startups across several categories that offer novel solutions for complex problems in the country, and creating businesses that are scalable and sustainable.
On 20 November 2020, Skyroot Aerospace entered into a memorandum of understanding with Dhruva Space, an Indian private satellite manufacturer.
On 2 February 2021, ISRO and Skyroot Aerospace signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA will allow Skyroot Aerospace to access the facilities and technical expertise in ISRO centers to develop their launch vehicles.
On 8 February 2021, Skyroot Aerospace announced that they partnered with Bellatrix Aerospace to use the Orbital Transfer Vehicle of Bellatrix Aerospace with their Vikram series of Launch Vehicles.
In March 2021, Skyroot Aerospace team won the Aegis Graham Bell Award for Jury choice award under innovation category for the year 2020.
On 20 May 2021, Skyroot Aerospace had raised $11 million in Series A funding round led by promoters of renewable energy firm Greenko Group (Anil Chalamalasetty and Mahesh Kolli), with participation of investors including Solar Industries and former WhatsApp Chief Business Office (CBO) Neeraj Arora, Mukesh Bansal founder of Myntra & Curefit, Worldquant Ventures, Graph Ventures, Sutton Capital, Vedanshu Investments and few other angels. Skyroot Aerospace will be deploying these funds to grow its team and complete the full development and testing of all subsystems of 'Vikram 1' launch vehicle.
Skyroot has already started bookings for launches starting end 2022 and are actively engaging global customers
The Department of Space has signed an agreement with Skyroot Aerospace for providing it access to ISRO's facilities and expertise towards testing of sub-systems and systems of launch vehicles. Skyroot Aerospace has, therefore, become the first Indian startup to formally enter into an agreement with ISRO for using its assets since the announcement of the new policy decision of the Government of India in May 2020, when finance minister opened up the space sector and ISRO's facilities for private players. Finally on 11 September 2021, ISRO’s scientific secretary and chairman of interim IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) committee R Umamaheswaran, who represented Department of Space, Skyroot Aerospace CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana and COO Naga Bharath Daka signed this framework MoU.
On 22 September 2021, the list of "The 2021 LinkedIn Top Startups" was revealed with 25 young, emerging companies where India wants to work. Skyroot Aerospace was ranked 7th on this LinkedIn's 2021 Top Startups List in India.
On 27 January 2022, Skyroot Aerospace raised of $4.5 million in a bridge round to Series B funding led by Google's founding board member Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures. The bridge round also witnessed participation by Wami Capital, existing investors – former WhatsApp chief business officer Neeraj Arora and ex-Google executive Amit Singhal. Skyroot plans to use the fund to build the infrastructure required to launch space vehicles. This round aids Skyroot to build critical infrastructure early on and helps accelerate towards their launch of 'Vikram 1' in 2022. This fresh investment round brought up the total capital raised by the startup to around $17 million, which was the largest raised by an Indian space start-up as of January 2022.