Why Skyroot could be key player in commercial space race:How it aims to fill the gaps that Elon Musk’s SpaceX couldn’t

On July 18, 2026, something happened at Sriharikota that would have sounded almost impossible a decade earlier. A rocket designed and built by an Indian private company lifted off from Indian soil and successfully reached orbit. The rocket was Vikram-I. The company behind it was Skyroot Aerospace. At 12:05 PM, the 22-metre-tall rocket blasted into the sky, carrying satellites and experiments into a 450-kilometre orbit. It became the first privately developed Indian orbital launch vehicle to successfully reach space from India, doing so on its maiden orbital attempt. But the rocket itself is only half the story. The more interesting story begins years earlier, when India had already proven it could reach space. Yet there was one thing India had barely built: A private space industry capable of turning that engineering expertise into a commercial business. And that is where Skyroot enters the story. The rule that kept Indian rocket startups out of space For decades, India’s space programme was overwhelmingly driven by the government and ISRO. That model produced extraordinary scientific achievements. But it also meant that the private sector had limited room to build and operate its own space businesses. And this mattered because the global space economy was changing. Space was slowly moving from being the exclusive domain of governments to becoming a commercial industry. India had the engineers. It had the manufacturing capability. It had ISRO’s accumulated knowledge. But the ecosystem needed to turn all of that into commercial space businesses was still lacking. Then came June 2020. The government announced reforms to open the space sector to private industry across a much wider range of activities and created IN-SPACe as an independent agency to promote, enable, authorise and supervise private space activities. This move changed the equation completely. Private companies could now build launch vehicles and satellites, provide space-based services and access government space infrastructure through a formal framework. In other words, ISRO no longer had to be the only engine driving India’s space ambitions. And one of the first companies to seize that opportunity was Skyroot. Two ex-ISRO scientists took the biggest bet of their lives In 2018, two former space scientists, Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, decided to leave the familiar world of ISRO and build something radically different. A rocket company. Their question was deceptively simple: What if reaching space could become more accessible and routine? That idea became Skyroot Aerospace. The company was founded in Hyderabad in 2018, before India’s 2020 reforms opened the sector to broader private participation. This is what makes their story interesting. They weren’t starting a software company. They weren’t building another smartphone app. They were attempting to build rockets. Rockets require specialised materials, propulsion systems, testing infrastructure, enormous engineering expertise and, most importantly, a way actually to launch them. And yet Skyroot kept going. In 2022, it achieved its first breakthrough. Its Vikram-S rocket became the first rocket built by an Indian private company to launch from Indian soil, reaching an altitude of about 89.5 kilometres during its suborbital mission. That was not orbit, but it was proof that Skyroot had gone from an idea to an actual flying rocket, and it is jut the beginning. One policy change turned India’s space industry upside down The most important character in Skyroot’s story isn’t actually Skyroot. It’s the ecosystem around it, because India’s 2020 reforms did more than allow a few startups to build rockets. They created a framework in which government infrastructure, private capital and startup engineering could work together. And Skyroot’s Vikram-I is a perfect example. ISRO and IN-SPACe supported the mission by facilitating access to testing and launch infrastructure. ISRO facilities were used for solid-motor casting and static testing, while other ISRO teams supported mission preparation and launch operations. This is an important distinction. The story isn’t about the following: A private company vs ISRO. It is about a private company working together with ISRO. ISRO spent decades building the technological foundation. Skyroot is showing what can happen when private companies are allowed to build businesses on top of that foundation. This could become India’s biggest advantage. The gap Elon Musk couldn’t fill, Skyroot saw it Now we reach the most important question: Why build another rocket when Elon Musk’s SpaceX already dominates the commercial launch business? The answer is Skyroot isn’t really trying to build another SpaceX. This is the point where this comparison is interesting. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 operates at an enormous scale. Its business model revolves around launching much larger payloads, achieving a high launch frequency, and using reusable rockets. Skyroot is targeting a different segment. Vikram-I is a small-satellite launch vehicle designed to carry up to 350 kg to low Earth orbit, with a focus on dedicated and flexible deployment for smaller payloads. Think of it this way. Imagine you need to send one small package across the country. You don’t necessarily need to hire an entire freight train. The same principle applies to space. A small satellite operator may not want to wait for a large rocket’s schedule or share a ride with dozens of other payloads. It may want: That is the market Skyroot wants to serve. And this is where the phrase “gap” becomes important. The opportunity isn’t necessarily something SpaceX failed to understand. It’s that the space market is becoming so large and diverse that there is room for multiple launch models. Skyroot bets that smaller, dedicated and flexible launches can become a valuable business in their own right. That is a much more interesting story than simply saying, “India is beating SpaceX.” It isn’t, not yet. But India may be building something that didn’t meaningfully exist before: a private launch industry of its own. From a rocket startup to India’s first space-tech unicorn Then came another signal that investors were beginning to take this opportunity seriously. In May 2026, Skyroot raised another $60 million, taking its total funding to around $160 million. Its valuation reached approximately $1.1 billion, making Skyroot India’s first space-tech startup to cross the $1-billion valuation mark. That valuation isn’t proof that Skyroot has already conquered the launch market. It is a bet on what the company could become. The new capital is intended to help Skyroot increase launch frequency, expand manufacturing capacity and develop its next-generation Vikram-2 rocket. And that distinction matters. Challenge ahead – Launching one successful rocket is an engineering achievement. Launching rockets repeatedly, reliably and profitably is a business. One successful launch isn’t enough This is where the Skyroot story should become more realistic. Because the hardest part may not have been getting Vikram-I into orbit. It may be doing it again and again and again. SpaceX didn’t become SpaceX because Falcon 9 worked once. Its real advantage came from developing a system capable of launching frequently, recovering hardware, reusing it and continuously lowering the cost of access to orbit. Skyroot will have to solve its own version of the same problem. Can it: And Skyroot isn’t alone. India’s private space ecosystem now includes companies working across launch vehicles, satellites, Earth observation, communications and space-based services. That means the real story isn’t about one rocket company. It’s about an ecosystem being born. Can Skyroot turn India into the next space superpower? India’s space economy is still relatively small compared with the world’s major space markets. The government estimates India’s space economy at around $8.4 billion, roughly 2% of the global space economy in 2023. Its current projections target approximately $40–45 billion by 2030/2033, depending on the government projection being referenced, and $100 billion by 2040. That is the bigger opportunity. India is increasingly trying to build companies across this entire chain. The government has even introduced programmes such as the Technology Adoption Fund (TAF), designed to help space technologies move from laboratory development toward commercial scale. ISRO’s 2025–26 annual report says the ₹500-crore scheme can provide funding support to eligible startups, MSMEs and larger industries. So, Skyroot could eventually be remembered not simply as the company that launched India’s first private orbital rocket. It could be remembered as one of the companies that helped prove India’s private space industry could actually work. The space race has just begun SpaceX has already demonstrated what a private space company can accomplish. India doesn’t need to copy SpaceX. It needs to create its own version of a space economy, one built around Indian engineering, Indian manufacturing, private capital and the technological foundation created by ISRO. This will bring us back to those two engineers who left ISRO in 2018. At the time, the idea of building a private Indian rocket company looked incredibly risky. Eight years later, their company has built an orbital rocket, attracted $160 million in funding and reached a $1.1 billion valuation. But perhaps the biggest achievement isn’t that Skyroot reached orbit. It’s that the door to India’s private space industry is now open, and there are hundreds of engineers, founders and investors waiting to walk through it. Skyroot may not be India’s SpaceX yet. It doesn’t need to be. Because the real breakthrough is much bigger: India has gone from having a world-class government space programme to building the foundations of a world-class private space industry. And if that ecosystem scales, Vikram-I may eventually be remembered not as the destination, but as the launchpad. Graphics: Aaysuhi Jain