Indian Space Industry

Indian Space Industry is poised for a Giant leap after some recent Success like Magalyaan and Chandrayan Missions. In the effort to liberalize Indian Space Industry Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaramaiya announced the government intentions to share ISRO Facilities with private sectors. The announcement might not have caught much attention but is surely a bold move towards “Self Reliant India”

Let us first understand what it means and how it impacts Indian startups and Private sectors. Hitherto Private sectors were limited to Tier1/Tier2 vendors in the Indian Space Industry, providing components and services to PSU like HAL, BEL who were the vendors to ISRO. While ISRO remains the engine of the Indian Space Industry, its commercial arm Antrix Corporation is responsible for marketing its product and services and interface with the private sector in the transfer of Technology Partnership. The reform will allow private sectors to use the ISRO facilities which will enable them to test their products and services with ISRO assets. The reform may seem minuscule esp when US Private entity SpaceX's Crew Dragon landed two NASA Astronauts at International Space Station recently. But Let's accept the challenge of jurisprudence in space activities and the ask for the meticulous design of law which it requires.

With increased tech adoption and an upsurge in Data Analytics, AI, ML-based start-ups, the reform would foster the Space Startups and build a positive sentiment amongst venture capitalists, Incubators, etc. They would see the possibility of making meaningful applications from the data gathered by ISRO. Opening of ISRO facility for testing will further increase the revenue of Antrix Corporation which fares abysmally low $7 billion (Just 2%) in comparison to the Global Space Industry($350 Billion). The reform opens the possibility of Capacity building and Space exploration including Planetary exploration for the Private Companies.