Govt grants Rs 105 crore to Dhruva Space for Project Garud satellite platform

The Government of India has granted ₹105 crore to Dhruva Space under the RDIF scheme for Project Garud, a 500 kg-class satellite platform aimed at scalable, high-volume manufacturing for telecom, defence and Earth observation applications with enhanced production capability.

Hyderabad: The Government of India’s Research, Development & Innovation Fund (RDIF) has extended Rs.105 crore to Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space for Project Garud, a next-generation flat-pack 500 kg-class satellite platform programme.

The 500 kg-class architecture is positioned to bridge the gap between smaller experimental satellites and larger traditional systems, offering an optimised balance of payload capacity, scalability, launch efficiency, and multi-mission adaptability for constellation-scale deployment requirements.

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The platform is being developed as a standardised, production-oriented spacecraft capable of supporting diverse applications across telecommunications, national security, earth observation.

Dhruva Space is among the first batch of companies to be awarded support under the RDIF initiative. Through this grant, Dhruva Space will undertake the development and commercialisation of a next-generation satellite architecture designed to address a critical gap in India’s Space ecosystem.

The roadmap is designed around a production cadence capable of supporting up to 2 satellites per day, enabling an annualised manufacturing potential of approximately 500 – 600 satellites across multiple mission configurations.

Abhay Egoor, CTO & Co-founder, Dhruva Space, said: “Project Garud represents the industrialisation of satellite manufacturing from India.”

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