The Vikas (a portmanteau from initials of VIKram Ambalal Sarabhai[5][6] ) is a family of hypergolic liquid fuelled rocket engines conceptualized and designed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre in the 1970s.

[7][8] The design was based on the licensed version of the Viking engine with the chemical pressurisation system.

[9] The early production Vikas engines used some imported French components which were later replaced by domestically produced equivalents.

The first engine built from the acquired technology was tested successfully in 1985 by Nambi Narayanan and his team at ISRO and named it Vikas.

[11] The engine uses up about 40 metric tons of UDMH as fuel and Nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) as oxidizer with a maximum thrust of 725 kN.