More fuel for India’s spacetech startups—Skyroot Aerospace raises $27.5 million in pre-Series C round led by Temasek

The Vikram series of rockets are being tested for regular space launch services to help deploy a single or constellation of small-to-medium sized satellites across earth’s lower orbits for Skyroot’s customers.

“As a key player in India's private space industry, we are amplifying our capabilities to tap into the expanding global satellite launch market with a goal to emerge as a favorite ‘go-to’ choice in space launch services for small satellites,” said Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace.

Founded in 2018 by two former ISRO scientists—Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka—Skyroot Aerospace is India’s most-funded spacetech startup with total funding of over $90 million since inception in 2018. The previous Series-B fundraise of $51 million was led by Singapore sovereign fund GIC in September, 2022.

In June, Pixxel—which is striving to build a “health monitor for earth” by placing constellations of hyperspectral earth-imaging technology—announced a $36 Million Series B funding round with participation from new investors such as Google. The round took Pixxel’s total funding to over $70 million.

Earlier in October, Agnikul Cosmos—a potential competitor to Skyroot—raised $26.7 million in a Series B fundraise led by Celesta Capital, Rocketship.VC and others, taking its total fundraise to over $40 million.

The capital infusion signals that India’s space tech startups have found not only the escape velocity to take off, but also raise private funding to enable their flight.

As of 2022, the Indian spacetech ecosystem—with more than 100 space startups— had raised nearly $250 million in funding, as per a report by the Indian Space Association (ISpA).

Most of the funding has come in since mid-2020 after ISRO and IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) started encouraging spacetech startups. In August this year, The pen was put to paper as the Indian Space Policy was released, opening the gates for greater participation from private players in a sector, which had ISRO as the gatekeeper since the 1960s.

India's space sector has the potential to grow from $8.4 billion currently to $44 billion in the next decade, as per a white paper released by IN-SPACe. Startups are expected to play a key role in bringing innovation.

Skyroot’s co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana says, “India's successful moon landing mission has reignited global interest in India's space prowess.”