India

Until five years ago, "Indian space industry" was a three-word phrase that meant ISRO. The Indian Space Research Organisation, founded in 1969, has built and operated nearly every Indian satellite, every Indian launcher, every Indian deep-space probe, and the entire associated ground network. Private firms existed as ISRO suppliers — Ananth Technologies, MTAR, Centum Electronics, Walchandnagar Industries — but were prohibited by policy from designing or selling complete space systems on their own account. The 2020 Indian Space Policy reforms changed that, and the change is producing the most rapid growth of any commercial space sector in the world.

ISRO's track record speaks for itself. Chandrayaan-3 in August 2023 became the fourth nation's lunar landing and the first ever soft landing south of 70° latitude — a region every other agency had been planning for but none had attempted. Aditya-L1 is in operation at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point. Mangalyaan, the 2014 Mars Orbiter, was famously cheaper than Hollywood's Gravity. The PSLV launcher has flown more than 60 successful missions and is the only operational launcher with a perfect track record over 50+ flights. The new GSLV Mk III (now LVM3) handles heavy lift for both Chandrayaan and the upcoming Gaganyaan crewed program. Gaganyaan itself, India's first crewed mission, is targeted for late 2026 or early 2027 and would make India the fourth nation in history to independently launch its own astronauts.

What's genuinely new is the commercial layer. Skyroot Aerospace flew the first private Indian rocket (Vikram-S, suborbital) in November 2022 and is targeting orbital with Vikram-1 in 2026. Agnikul Cosmos flew its 3D-printed semi-cryogenic Agnibaan SOrTeD demonstrator in May 2024 — also a sub-orbital test, also a credible step toward an orbital small launcher. Pixxel has built the world's leading commercial hyperspectral satellite constellation, with significant US Department of Defence and intelligence contracts. Dhruva Space is becoming a credible small-satellite manufacturer for both domestic and export customers. GalaxEye Space is developing a multi-sensor platform combining SAR and optical imaging — a technically distinctive product nobody else is currently fielding.

The 51 private organisations on our directory understate the activity. There are probably another 150 Indian space-tech startups in the seed-stage range that haven't yet reached our verification threshold. The government has been aggressive about supporting this growth: IN-SPACe (the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) was set up specifically to license private operations and facilitate partnerships with ISRO; NSIL (NewSpace India) is the dedicated commercial-arm subsidiary that handles ISRO's commercial customer base. The combination has converted India in a few years from a state-monopoly market to one with the most dynamic private sector in Asia outside Japan and China.

Two structural advantages will compound over the next decade. First, India produces the largest cohort of trained aerospace and software engineers in the world after China, at compensation levels that make the entire national space ecosystem cost-competitive in a way no other major program is. ISRO's per-flight launch costs are the only credible threat to SpaceX in dollars per kilogram, even before the private commercial sector matures. Second, the geopolitical position. As the US-China space split continues to widen, India's position as a non-aligned major space power with NATO-friendly engineering culture and Western-friendly export controls becomes increasingly valuable to American, European, and Japanese partners. Pixxel's US defence contracts are the leading edge of what will probably become a much larger pattern.

The risks are also clear. The commercial cohort is small enough that one or two notable failures could chill private capital significantly; ISRO bureaucracy is famously slow at approving private operations even when policy permits them; and most of the early-stage commercial founders are competing for a small pool of Indian aerospace engineers that ISRO itself also wants to hire. If the government continues to push policy reform at its current pace, and if Skyroot or Agnikul reaches orbit cleanly in 2026, India will end the decade as one of the four indispensable national space programs in the world. The other three are obvious. A fifth seat is, for the first time in space-industry history, genuinely up for grabs, and India is by some distance the leading candidate to take it.