He Quit ISRO To Start An Illegal Rocket Company | The SKYROOT Story ft. Pawan Kumar Chandana

**Ganesh** (0:11)
Ladies and gentlemen, India is now building a company that is about to compete with SpaceX. Look at this rocket, it is standing on a launch pad in Sriharikota, and right now, as you watch this video, it is about to do something that no private company in India has ever done in 78 years of independence.
This is the rocket of Skyroot. You see, for most of history, the world told India to stay in its lane, grow your food, run your factories, answer the world's phone calls. But when it comes to the stars, they said leave the stars to the big boys. Space was always meant to be the playground of the West, and we were only allowed to watch what the big boys do.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
A country that has extreme poverty, really, should they really be spending this sort of money on a space program?

**Ganesh** (1:00)
But a few brave men and women put in their blood and sweat, carried rocket parts on bicycles, turned a church into a lab to pioneer India's first leap into space.
And now, standing on the shoulders of those giants, two ex-ISRO engineers with no money, no connections and no legal permit, somehow decided to build a company that offers something even SpaceX doesn't offer. And today, right before the launch, we have the co-founder of Skyroot, Pawan Kumar at the podcast. And in this episode, he teaches us, why is the whole world suddenly going gaga over space? How does a rocket company actually make money? As founders, why is space the next big goldmine of opportunity for normal people like you and me? And why is it so so important for India?
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Hi Pawan, welcome to the Indian Business Podcast. Ever since SpaceX went IPO, everybody is going gaga over space. And when we were doing research about SpaceX, we found out the amazing story of Skyroot. And today, as you can see, you're a star over here, which is why half the team is sitting here to witness your journey through your lens. So firstly, thank you so much. It's an honor to have you at the podcast.

**Pawan Kumar Chandana** (4:13)
Thanks Ganesh and hello everybody. A pleasure to meet you.

**Ganesh** (4:17)
Amazing. Pawan, tell me something.
What exactly has happened in the last 15 years because of which every Tom, Dick and Harry is launching a rocket. SpaceX launched 165 rocket. Blue Origin is about to launch 15 to 16 rockets. How is this happening that every alternate day we're having a rocket launch?

**Pawan Kumar Chandana** (4:33)
First is like the demand has become so high, especially for launching communication satellites, which can give internet to billions of people directly from space. And then like there's a lot of Earth observation satellites, where like satellites have cameras and then the click images and that analytics from these images are used by various industries. For example, the solar solar panels 15 years ago, this is the statistics, right? So 2010, it is 200 rupees per watt. And 15 years, it has become close to 10 rupees per watt. This is like a massive production scale and also advancements in tech, and all coming together and making it like significantly orders of magnitude less cost. The same transformation is happening in rockets as well, where rockets are getting reusable. So traditionally, what happens is that they're in multiple stages.