On November 15, history is set to be created with Vikram-S, the first-ever rocket launcher manufactured by a private company, being launched from ISRO’s launch pad at Sriharikota. The rocket is from Skyroot Aerospace, founded by 31-year-old Pawan Kumar Chandana in 2018.
The move to privatise the Indian space sector has been vital in pushing young entrepreneurs to actively participate in its success. Chandana, who is focussed on rocket launchers could be one of those many to influence this shift. Chandana says his interest — and obsession — in rockets came in his college years.
Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace, is a mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur and later worked as a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for about six years (2012-18).
“Towards the later days of my college years, I became fascinated with rockets. They were these fantastic machines that have the power to escape the earth’s gravity and go to space. We wouldn’t have so many things without them,” he says in a TedX talk.
Infatuated with the prospect of working with rockets, Chandana attended an interview at ISRO, attributing his selection to luck as he felt he had actually performed lower than his batchmates. He was stationed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Kerala for six years, learning about rockets and launchers that he eventually became obsessed with.
“I was so happy to work with rockets and understand how they work. At ISRO, I was fascinated while watching the development, assembly and launch of the rockets. I was even at the launchpad several times as a part of my team. I was able to work on some of the largest and prestigious rockets,” he says.
He eventually quit ISRO, forming Skyroot Aerospace along with another IIT graduate, Naga Bharath Dhaka. From there, the rest is history, maybe literally, as Chandana became among the first space entrepreneurs, building India’s first private launch vehicles. He was listed in the ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’ in 2020 when he was just a year short of 30.
His company Skyroot Aerospace is the first among private players to test multiple rocket propulsion systems. Also the company is the first private start-up ever to sign an agreement with ISRO which allowed access to India’s premier space agency’s expertise and facilities, besides to test its systems and subsystems.
The agreement saw a slew of tests by Chandana’s Skyroot, which included Raman-1, a hypergolic fuel upper stage engine; Kalam-5, a solid fuel rocket engine; Kalam-100, the rocket stage; and Dhawan-1, the upper cryogenic engine — all these for the Vikram series of rocket launchers planned by Skyroot Aerospace under Chandana’s supervision.
Skyroot Aerospace in May 2021 raised $ 11 million in a series A funding round which attracted contributions from a series of companies and another $4.5 million in a series B funding.
“I wanted to go more in-depth when it came to rockets and, as I did, I realised how much there was that I could do with them, how much there was to understand,” he says. This led him to realise space was where the next big step for humanity lies, in terms of resources as well as for humanity’s survival.
“I believe rockets are the most fascinating machinery ever built by humans, and are now in need of a new techno-economic makeover, to open up a new frontier in space access and exploration,” he says in his LinkedIn profile.
While many are inclined to call Chandana ‘India’s Elon Musk’, with a comparison to SpaceX, he holds a much larger position in the Indian space sector — a young pioneer going down in history as the father of rocketry in the Indian private space sector.
newindianexpress.com