The primary objective of IRS-1C was to provide systematic and repetitive acquisition of data of the Earth's surface under nearly constant illumination conditions.

Images from regions other than India will be downlinked and distributed through a commercial entity in the United States.

The satellite was equipped with onboard tape recorder with storage capacity of 62 Gigabits.

IRS-1C was equipped with three instruments: The images was marketed through a private company in the United States.

[4] The data transmitted from the satellite was gathered from National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad and EOSAT, a partnership of Hughes Aircraft and RCA.