Space industry of India

Several private companies like Larsen & Toubro, Nelco (Tata Group), OneWeb, MapmyIndia, Walchandnagar Industries are founding members of this organisation.

Reforms liberalising the space sector and nondisclosure agreements came in the late 2010s, leading to the emergence of various private spaceflight companies.

[9][10] India's interest in space travel began in the early 1960s, when scientists launched a Nike-Apache rocket from TERLS, Kerala.

However, the launchers didn't become operational until decades later, as India initially faced a great problem in the development of cryogenic engines.

[24] The Indian space program emerged as an economic sector with government-backed investments with official institutions in the military and civilian administrations over decades of engineering.

Over four decades, ISRO continued transferring technologies to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), leading to there being over 500 suppliers of various components in 2017.

Large mapping projects for various civilian and military requirements were outsourced by the government, which drove the growth of India's private space sector.

[26] In the late 2010s, a large number of startups started to emerge throughout the country with their own proposals and concepts to develop various satellite technologies and rockets.

The liberalized entry routes under the amended policy are aimed at attracting potential investors in the Indian companies in space.

[38][39] In July 2024, Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the Indian government will form a $119 million venture capital find for space startups in India.

[42] ISRO and DoS continue to remain dominant in the national space sectFDr, having launched more than 100 domestic and more than 300 foreign satellites for 33 countries,[8] while private firms have gradually been gaining ground.

The entire amount of money invested in ISRO over the past 55 years since its founding is less than NASA's annual budget.