Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace raises $11 mn in Series-A funding

Hyderabad: Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace raised $11 million (about Rs 80.6 crore) in Series A funding, making it the largest investment in the Indian Space startup segment after the Indian cabinet approved private sector participation in Space activities. It is a national award-winning startup, building India’s first privately built space launch vehicles.

The $11 million Series-A was led by Greenko Group founders Anil Chalamalasetty and Mahesh Kolli; and saw participation from public listed entity Solar Group (a major Space and Defence supplier), former-Whatsapp CBO Neeraj Arora, existing investor Mukesh Bansal (founder of Myntra and CureFit), Worldquant Ventures, Graph Ventures, Sutton Capital, Vedanshu Investments, and few angels. Anil, Mahesh and Solar Group, will be joining Skyroot’s Board of Directors.

Anil Chalamalasetty and Mahesh Kolli in a joint statement said, “Skyroot is building the infrastructure, which will help develop new opportunities for innovation in the Space ecosystem and offer unique ways to improve the quality of life on earth. The next-generation technology, Skyroot is building today, will unlock potential for sustainability interventions, space-based research, data analytics and telecommunications. We are confident our partnership will help them accelerate towards being a leading Space launch player globally.”

Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Skyroot, said, “We are proud to be backed by visionary entrepreneurs who built industry leading businesses and share our passion for democratising access to Space. We are excited to work with them in building Skyroot into a leading Space player globally.”

“Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been offering great support to us. We signed an agreement with them and are working closely for our testing and launch requirements,” added Chandana.

Naga Bharath Daka, co-founder and COO of Skyroot, said, “This round adds more fuel to our rocket programme and will support in completing development and testing of all subsystems of our first launch vehicle Vikram-1 and strengthening our world-class team. We started bookings for launches starting from mid next year and are actively engaging global customers. We intend to raise $40 million (over Rs 290 crore) more to fund our aggressive growth plans over the next few years.”

Skyroot’s team has over 70 rocket engineers with a cumulative experience of 500 years in the rocket industry and has been actively developing its Vikram series of launch vehicles for the past two years. It is the first Indian private company to test fire multiple rocket propulsion systems.

Mukesh Bansal (founder of Myntra and CureFit) earlier backed Skyroot with a $1.5 million investment through his incubator Meraki Labs.

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