Spacetech has arrived, and it's time for take-off: Vishesh Rajaram, co-founder, Speciale Invest

Indian Express

4 hours ago

Vishesh Rajaram is the co-founder of Speciale Invest, a venture capital firm investing in deep tech, with a particular emphasis on spacetech.
Speciale Invest is known for its early and consistent bets on Indian spacetech startups, such as Agnikul Cosmos, Astrogate Labs, GalaxEye, Kawa Space, and InspeCity. Its portfolio spans satellites, launch vehicles, and space infrastructure, supporting startups across upstream (hardware, launch vehicles, satellites) and downstream (data analytics, communication) applications.
Vishesh began his career as a corporate banker with ICICI Bank before moving to Ventureast, an early-stage and growth-stage fund, as a Principal.. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business.
Vishesh spoke to indianexpress.com on the opportunities for spacetech startups in India, why the timing is right for investing in the sector, the unique problems that spacetech could solve, and ideas that failed to catch fire. Edited excerpts:
Vishesh Rajaram: Let me give you a background. The venture capital world has gone through a wave of cloud, SaaS, mobile penetration, e-commerce, and fintech. They did not see the necessity of immersing themselves in the world of science and deep tech. So much was already going on that one did not break his head over deep tech. But we need to remember that India was essentially a manufacturing nation. We made motorcycles and cars, and we exported them. We also had the expertise of exporting precision aerospace components. You must understand that all the big conglomerates that made wealth between 1960 and 2000 were not into IT services, they were not into software. They were all traditional manufacturing companies.
We do not recognise it, but we have a talent for manufacturing. The missing element was capital. We started our fund in 2017, and our focus was to invest in IP-rich companies, with differentiated tech and product, and spacetech is one of our focus areas. Others are energy, health, and advanced manufacturing.
If you are selling milk or eggs, you can test it in three months, but if you are building a rocket, it will take you three years. So the challenge about science and deep tech investments is that they need a gestation period. The venture ecosystem has historically avoided such businesses. They do software, e-commerce, and fintech. They prefer a two- to three-year gestation period and see it as not risky. Spacetech is challenging because it presents the sort of risk that, traditionally, VCs in the country have not taken.
However, the time is now right for deep tech investments. This is partly due to geopolitics and partly because of India's global positioning. It is also because the rest of the world is beginning to buy technology from us. Fifteen years ago, this was not the case. No one said they want to buy technology or put their satellite on our rockets. But that has changed. Today, India's credibility is significantly more than it was 15 to 20 years ago.
Vishesh Rajaram: We are a very early-stage investor. When we invest, it is mostly at a business plan stage, and maybe some early prototype is available. One, we look at the team. What has the team done? What insights do they carry? What do they know that other people don't know? That allows them to go further and do different things.
We pay a lot of attention to what it is that the team is doing that nobody else is, or what is very hard for other people to do. And therefore, if you are successful, you will end up being very monopolistic. We also care a lot about the velocity of market growth. All markets are large, but if the market is not growing, and if there are no strong pain points, why will someone give a chance to a small startup? Only if the pain is very deep and there is no solution, is there an opportunity for a startup.
Then, even if the startup does not have a full product, we say, come and try it out. Let us make something work and run it as an experiment.
Vishesh Rajaram: What most of us do not remember is that India was among the four or five space pioneers, which showed that we had a lot of talent, experience, and capability on the spacetech front.
The question then was: Will the market grow? Twenty years ago, the spacetech market was dependent on the government, the defence industry, and university research. Commercial applications were not available since the cost of going to space and the cost of building anything in space was very expensive.
Over the last 10 years, thanks to private efforts, there has been a consistent decline in the cost of launching a satellite and a significant decline in the cost of manufacturing a satellite. So suddenly, what was costing $50 million now costs $2 million. The economics of space have changed. There is a strong realisation that with the kind of data that is collected on Earth from space, we can make good business decisions around weather, insurance, defence, and agriculture. Therefore, there's an opportunity for this economy to begin and grow.
At the time we began investing, this was only the tip of the iceberg. The sector was just beginning to heat up. Normally, in one sector, there's only one market variable that is moving. In this, there were two. The cost of going to space and the cost of making the satellite were going down. We had multiple things working in our favour. Therefore, for us, it was a sitting duck.
Vishesh Rajaram: We have made six investments. There is Agnikul Cosmos, a company that uses 3D printing tech to take satellites to space. It takes six months to make a rocket. They said we would do it in two weeks, and they did it. That's our differentiator. Agnikul aims to provide on-demand launches for micro and nanosatellites, democratising access to space through affordable small satellite launch vehicles.
There is GalaxEye Space, which is a satellite constellation company. They are developing India's first multi-sensor imaging satellites, combining synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical data to deliver high-resolution, all-weather imagery. The company aims to provide insights for industries like agriculture, urban planning, defence, and environmental monitoring. It would also contribute to disaster management and maritime surveillance, among other sectors.
There is Astrogate Labs with a focus on space communication.Any satellite is launched using a rocket, and once it is in space, it collects information. It still needs to send the information to Earth. But today, space communication happens on radio frequency, which is slow and expensive. Astrogate works on laser communications, thereby increasing the speed of communication and reducing its cost.
There is InspeCity, which is essentially building maintenance capabilities for satellites. Their solutions aim to extend satellite lifespans through refueling, repositioning, and de-orbiting, reducing costs for operators and mitigating space debris. Their work supports the emerging in-space economy for sustainable satellite operations and helping global efforts to manage orbital congestion.
There is Kawa Space, which focuses on satellite-based downstream data analytics, providing geospatial intelligence for industries such as agriculture, insurance, and urban development. By using satellite imagery and analytics, Kawa Space delivers insights to customers, helping them monitor assets, predict trends, and optimise operations. Their work aligns with the increasing demand for earth observation data.
Vishesh Rajaram: Drug discovery is big. We will be able to discover drugs and molecules significantly better in what is called microgravity. Chemicals crystallise better when there is no gravity. On Earth, you cannot have a no-gravity environment. Therefore, having a microgravity environment would help pharmaceutical research.
I think space maintenance could be the other one. Why do you have to keep sending satellites? Why can't you make satellites in space? Things like that.
There will be substantial advances in existing uses of satellite data in agriculture, weather prediction, etc, but these are improvements per se, not something totally new.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about some spacetech startups globally that you think are solving some interesting problems.
Vishesh Rajaram: Globally, we are seeing a fascinating wave of innovation across diverse areas of spacetech. A few standout startups are Inbound Aerospace (India) and Varda Space Industries (USA). They are building in-orbit manufacturing capabilities, using microgravity to produce materials such as high-grade pharmaceuticals and semiconductors that are difficult to manufacture on Earth.
InspeCity (India) and Astroscale (Japan) are building cities in space, tackling maintenance of satellites in orbit, refueling and repairing satellites, and orbital debris removal, a massive problem as satellite constellations scale. Each of these startups has a new dimension of commercial space, moving beyond just launch and communications into data, manufacturing, and sustainability.
Vishesh Rajaram: Rather than naming specific companies, I will highlight a few themes where spacetech ventures have historically struggled, often due to timing, regulation, or capital intensity.
Space-based internet in the pre-Starlink era is one idea tried out by many startups in the early 2000s, which failed due to the lack of reusable launch vehicles, expensive satellite hardware, and no real commercial use case at the time. The market was not ready for this idea.
There was the idea of asteroid mining, which was visionary but premature in both technology readiness and capital requirement. The time horizon was too long for most commercial investors.
Vishesh Rajaram: India's spacetech ecosystem is at a turning point. What is working is that ISRO is opening up. The creation of IN-SPACe has been a game changer. It provides a clear regulatory path for private players to work with the ISRO infrastructure and data.
More than 150 spacetech startups have emerged in India in the last five years, covering everything from launch to sensors to analytics. Companies like GalaxEye, Agnikul, Kawa Space, and Astrogate are now on the global map.
Institutions like IIT Madras, IISc, and BITS Pilani have become innovation hotbeds, not just in research, but in spinning out real ventures. India has the building blocks for a thriving space economy. What we need now is demand aggregation, especially from strategic and commercial buyers, and a maturing capital stack.