A successful Series-B financing round saw Indian start-up Skyroot Aerospace receive US$51 million. This is the largest funding round ever in the space-tech sector.
GIC, one of the most reputable investors in India, led the funding round. Mayank Rawat, Managing Director of GIC India Direct Investment Group, will join Skyroot’s Board.
The latest round of funding comes in response to the Indian government’s massive push into the space industry, which included opening it up to entrepreneurs and promoting private sector involvement.
This investment strengthens Skyroot’s ability to capitalize on trillion-dollar space commercial possibilities and further confirms the company’s technological advantages. The business intends to satiate the expanding demand from the global small satellite industry.
India’s Skyroot is developing India’s first privately built space launch vehicles. The flagship Vikram series of launch vehicles is named for Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, who established India’s space program. Uniquely constructed with an all-carbon fiber frame, Vikram Series rockets can send up to 800 kg of payloads into low-earth orbit (LEO)
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Skyroot have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to share resources and expertise.
Skyroot is gearing up to launch a demonstrator in space this year and pursue global customer acquisition.
“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 the high launch cadence required by our satellite customers. 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.” said Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder, and CEO of skyroot.
“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 a full-fledged commercial satellite launch scale within a year from now. We have started booking payload slots for our upcoming launches.”, said Naga Bharath Daka, Co-Founder and COO of Skyroot.
The financial advisers for this funding round are Rothschild & Co India. The additional funding will assist in growing the elite space engineering team, which presently numbers around 200 people and has a combined expertise of more than a thousand years in the rocket industry.
Prior steps in the company’s development of its commercial space launch vehicles have previously been accomplished. The founders of Myntra and CultFit, Greenko Group, Solar Industries India Limited, Google board member Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo Ventures, Neeraj Arora (Former WhatsApp Global Business Chief), Wami Capital, and others from previous funding rounds are among the notable shareholders of Skyroot has added with this round.
India’s first privately designed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid, and solid fuel-based rocket engines were successfully produced and tested by the four-year-old Skyroot, whose R&D and manufacturing activities heavily utilize sophisticated composite and 3D-printing technology.
A new market study predicts that the market for space launch services will increase at a CAGR of 12.25% over the forecast period, from $14.21 billion in 2022 to $31.90 billion in 2029.
