India’s first space think tank launched, seeks to set the stage for country’s own unicorn by 2030

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Bangalore: With increasing efforts from various quarters to enable a more participatory ecosystem for the private space industry, members of the community have come together to launch Spaceport Sarabhai (S2), the country’s first dedicated space think tank.

The organization will be based out of Bengaluru with satellite presence in Delhi, Berlin (Germany), Sendai (Japan) and Boston (US). It is named after Vikram Sarabhai Establishment and Leadership India’s space program.

The think tank aims to elevate the current Indian space industry – largely occupied by ISRO and with private companies that combine its services – to an industry-friendly, financially supportive, regulated space, By providing policy guidance, stakeholder feedback and research data. Government and Department of Space.

The founding team of the organization includes space entrepreneurs Sushmita Mohanty and Narayan Prasad, space lawyers Ashok GV and Ranjana Kaul, space robotics engineer Shreya Santra and political science fellow Mira Rohera. It was launched virtually on Wednesday evening.

“The most pressing problem the Indian private sector has been facing for a few decades is how to go beyond serving ISRO’s domestic mandate to become a thriving player in the (now) $440 billion civilian space market,” Mohanty told ThePrint.

“We need to liberalize our space economy, overhaul our old regulatory environment and make it look forward, to create an industry-friendly space policy for satellite manufacturing, satcoms, geospatial services for space transportation Hiring the best space law and policy experts.” she added. “We (the industry) should have done this 20 years ago, but we are just getting started.”

Collecting primary data on space activity in India for core research is a core area in which the team hopes to move forward.

“There is a lot that can be done to collect primary data and provide insights on top of the actual real data on the ground,” Prasad said. “So policy makers can reflect on this to base their decisions on some anecdotal statistical evidence, not just opinion.”

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survey started

S2 has already started surveying a private company set up by Indian co-founders abroad to understand why they didn’t set them up in the country. Such surveys are industry sponsored and the first couple is being conducted by doctoral students from IIM-Kozhikode.

through them Network In the space industry, the team is also expected to help promote Indian NewSpace companies abroad and raise foreign capital and engage in international markets.

While ISRO Set-up Indian National Center for Space Promotion and Authorization (IN-SPACe) in 2020, to be a nodal agency to fast-track private players into the sector, space experts have expressed their concern over the lack of a supportive financial and regulatory ecosystem Which could expand private sector participation in outer space activities or allow them to compete in existing international markets.

“We want to see at least two space unicorns emerge from India by 2030,” Mohanty said.

The think tank is also planning to launch an S2 journal, which will be published quarterly, featuring opinions, future perspectives, use cases and first-person pioneering accounts.

Their objective statement says it aims to give India an international voice, develop the body of knowledge that informs space policy, builds perspective through discourse, provides data-backed policy recommendations, and Transform India into a developed space economy by 2030.

(Edited by Arun Prashant)

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