Skyroot and Agnikul: What India's Private Rocket Startups Are Building and Who They Launch For
The Launch That Changed the Baseline
On 18 November 2022, a rocket called Vikram-S lifted off from Sriharikota and reached space. It carried three payloads, stayed up for about 300 seconds, and came back down. By any orbital mission standard, that is a modest result. By the standard of what India's private space sector had done before, it was the entire baseline shifting at once.
Skyroot Aerospace, founded in Hyderabad in 2018 by former ISRO engineers Pawan Kumar Chandana and Bharath Daka, built Vikram-S as a single-stage suborbital demonstrator. The point was not the altitude. The point was proving that a private Indian company could design, build, test, and launch a rocket without the government doing it for them. No other private Indian company had done that before Vikram-S flew.
The vehicle they are actually selling is Vikram-1, an orbital rocket capable of carrying up to 480 kilograms to low Earth orbit. It uses liquid propulsion on its upper stage and solid fuel on its lower stages. Skyroot has positioned Vikram-1 as a dedicated small satellite launch vehicle, meaning customers book the whole rocket rather than sharing a ride. For operators running a constellation of small satellites on a tight schedule, that distinction matters enormously.
Agnikul and the Engine Nobody Had Printed Before
Agnikul Cosmos, founded in Chennai in 2017 by Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM, took a different technical bet. Their Agnibaan rocket is designed around a single-piece 3D-printed engine called SoraNova. Every part of the combustion chamber, the nozzle, the injector head, is printed as one continuous structure rather than assembled from separate machined components. No rocket engine had been manufactured that way before Agnikul flew theirs.
On 30 May 2024, Agnikul launched the Agnibaan SubOrbital Technology Demonstrator, called SOrD, from their own private launchpad at Sriharikota. The pad itself is significant: it is the first privately owned and operated launch facility in India. The flight was short and suborbital, but it validated the SoraNova engine in actual flight conditions, which is the test that matters.
The full Agnibaan vehicle is designed to carry up to 100 kilograms to low Earth orbit. That is a smaller payload than Vikram-1, and deliberately so. Agnikul is targeting customers who need a very small, very specific orbit on a short timeline. Their pitch is configurability: Agnibaan can be adjusted between six and twelve engines depending on the mission, which lets them tune the rocket to the payload rather than the other way around.
Who Is Actually Buying
The customers for both companies fall into three broad groups.
The first is domestic satellite operators. India has a growing number of companies building small Earth observation and communications satellites, including Pixxel, Digantara, and Dhruva Space. These companies need launches, and booking a slot on ISRO's PSLV or SSLV means joining a queue that can run years long. A dedicated private launch vehicle offers a faster path to orbit, even at a higher per-kilogram cost.
The second group is international. Small satellite operators from Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have been buying rides on Indian launch vehicles for years through ISRO's Antrix and later NewSpace India Limited. Private Indian rockets extend that market by offering more scheduling flexibility. Skyroot has already signed launch service agreements with international customers.
The third group is defence. India's defence establishment has been increasingly interested in rapid, responsive launch capability, meaning the ability to put a satellite into a specific orbit on short notice after a crisis. A private rocket that can be prepared and launched faster than a government vehicle has obvious value in that context, though specific defence contracts for either company have not been publicly detailed.
Where ISRO Fits in This Picture
ISRO is not the competition for Skyroot or Agnikul. The relationship is more structural than adversarial. IN-SPACe, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre set up in 2020, is the regulatory body that licenses private launch activity and facilitates access to ISRO facilities including Sriharikota. Both Skyroot and Agnikul have used ISRO infrastructure for testing and launch operations.
ISRO's own small launch vehicle, the SSLV, can carry up to 500 kilograms to low Earth orbit. It is a direct size competitor to Vikram-1 on paper. In practice, ISRO's launch calendar is driven by national priorities: the Gaganyaan crewed mission, planetary science, national satellite programmes. The commercial small satellite market is not where ISRO's attention is concentrated, and that gap is exactly what the private companies are filling.
The analogy that gets used often in this space is SpaceX and NASA. SpaceX did not replace NASA. It took the commercial cargo and crew market that NASA did not have the bandwidth or the incentive to serve efficiently. Skyroot and Agnikul are making a version of the same argument about India's launch market.
What neither company has yet done is complete an orbital mission. Vikram-1 has not flown. Agnibaan has not reached orbit. The suborbital demonstrations were necessary steps, but the customers who matter most, the ones booking dedicated launches for operational satellites, are waiting for the first successful orbital flight before committing at scale. That flight, for whichever company achieves it first, will be the moment the commercial Indian launch market stops being a promise and becomes a product. The 2022 and 2024 launches showed the engines work. The next one has to show the orbit is real.