Skyroot Aerospace Raises $51 Million, Boosting The Future Of Small Satellite Launches Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian Space-Tech startup has raised $51 Million (INR 403 Crore) in its Series-B financing round. This is the biggest funding round ever in Indian Space-Tech.
By Kabir Singh Bhandari •
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Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian Space-Tech startup has raised $51 Million (INR 403 Crore) in its Series-B financing round. This is the biggest funding round ever in Indian Space-Tech.
The funding round was led by GIC, and Mayank Rawat, Managing Director of GIC India Direct Investment Group shall be joining Skyroot's Board. The fresh round of funding follows in the footsteps of the Indian government's major push to the space sector by including private sector players.
This investment goes on to further authenticate Skyroot's strong points in space technology, giving a push to its capabilities so that it can tap into trillion-dollar space business opportunities. The company shall be catering to the increasing demand from the international small satellite market.
Skyroot is innovating India's first privately developed space launch vehicles. The flagship Vikram series of launch vehicles, was named after the founder of India's space program, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Vikram Series rockets are made with an all-carbon-fiber structure and can launch upto 800 kg of payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Skyroot is the first startup to sign an MoU with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for sharing facilities and expertise. "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 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 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.
Rothschild & Co India are the financial advisors for this funding round and the added fund shall help in the expansion of the world class space engineering team which currently has around 200 employees.
The company has already completed crucial milestones towards the development of its commercial Space launch vehicles. With this round, Skyroot has expanded its marquee shareholder base including Myntra & CultFit founder Mukesh Bansal, Greenko Group founders (Anil Chalamalasetty & Mahesh Kolli), Solar Industries India Limited, Google board member Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures, Neeraj Arora (Former-WhatsApp Global Business Chief), Wami Capital and others from past funding rounds.
Skyroot's mission is to 'Open Space for All', visualising a world where space flight is as affordable, regular and reliable as air flight. Skyroot has successfully built and tested India's first privately developed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid, and solid fuel-based rocket engines; the R &D and production activities extensively use advanced composite and 3D-printing technologies.
