Inside Agnikul, the Indian space launch vehicle startup making global history

(left)Moin SPM, co-founder and COOSrinath Ravichandran, co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran Image: Mexy Xavier and digital imaging Kapil Kashyap
 
Only a few days before Agnibaan lifted off flawlessly, on its first flight test, the launch had been called off at T minus 11 seconds. Shortly after that aborted event, Vishesh Rajaram, an early investor in Agnikul Cosmos, the company that made the rocket, found himself mulling over a throwaway comment from co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran, whose face had betrayed nothing more than a smile.

“Come tomorrow, we’ll launch,” Ravichandran had said to him. And that was exactly what happened—only a few days later, of course.

 Agnikul, a space launch vehicle startup in Chennai, on May 30, successfully tested its first technology demonstrator rocket that showed its one-piece 3D-printed engine worked as intended—on its first attempt. The test made history not only in the private space sector in India, but also around the world.

The test, which lasted not much more than a minute, saw Agnibaan reach a height of about 8 km before it fell back and plunged into the oceans, in the Bay of Bengal. The successful test, on the rocket’s first flight, underscores the perseverance of the 200-engineer team at Agnikul, led by co-founders Ravichandran and cricket buddy Moin SPM.

 “Our entire investment, our entire thesis and our belief in Agnikul at the time we invested was this three-member team, or rather two-and-a-half,” recalls Rajaram, whose firm Speciale Invest gave Agnikul its first “institutional cheque”—as they say in venture capital parlance—in 2019.

The “half” is his reference to Professor Satyanarayanan R Chakravarthy, head of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development at IIT-Madras.

Professor Satya to everyone at the institute has been a founding advisor to team Agnikul. Rajaram’s jest about the “half” is owing to the professor’s prolific involvement in founding several other startups as well at the institute, including one of his own—an electric taxi venture.

On four occasions, the team endured the suspense of not knowing if the rocket will lift off and fly; the launch was called off on these four occasions.

Rajaram describes project director K Umamaheshwari as a person with nerves of steel, for, leading up to the automated countdown is a series of complex tasks that need to be coordinated across 20 teams, each with its own countdown; during that time, it rested on Umamaheshwari’s shoulders to say go or no go.

On May 30, at 7:15 am local time, the indigenously designed and developed rocket lifted off from Sriharikota, home to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) Satish Dhawan space port; Agnikul has its own launchpad here called Dhanush, which it set up in 2022.

The rocket was named Agnibaan Sub-Orbital Technology Demonstrator (SOrTeD).




 Professor V Kamakoti, director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, said, “very innovative, first time in the world, deep core technology was demonstrated today by Agnikul”. This should inspire young students to boldly take the entrepreneurship route and become employers, he added.

 Ravichandran and Moin started Agnikul in 2017. The startup was incubated at IIT, Madras Research Park, and so far, the entrepreneurs have raised $67 million in venture capital funding. Investors include marquee names such as Celesta Capital, Mayfield and Rocketship, and well-known Indian deeptech investors Pi Ventures and Speciale Invest that Rajaram and his friend Arjun Rao started.

Agnibaan demonstrated “the world’s most integrated single shot 3D printed piece. It signals the ability to rapidly assemble rockets that is unparalleled”, Chakravarthy said.



 There are other important aspects to Agnibaan. One is, it uses aviation-grade kerosene, so “all you need is access to an airport to get this fuel and access to some industrial area with liquid oxygen. That’s all it takes to fly this vehicle”, Ravichandran says.

The “semi-cryo” refers to how Agnibaan doesn’t need to store the components of its fuel mixture at low temperatures and high pressure, which in turn has a salutary effect on the rocket’s capability to carry more payload and develop greater thrust.

Agnikul has also set up its own rocket engine factory that is envisioned to turn out an engine in a matter of days, eventually. The company is in talks to supply launch vehicles to commercial customers looking to tap the low-Earth-orbit opportunity.

Also read: How India's space economy could hit $100 billion by 2040

Next Big Goal

This first test did exactly what its name said: Demonstrate that the tech works. It has also boosted the confidence of team Agnikul. The tools, algorithms and systems they’ve built all delivered to purpose. For example, “the vehicle was supposed to hold itself at around 2.5 degrees till around 45 seconds and it exactly held itself at 2.5 degrees”, Ravichandran says.

“That’s actually harder than going vertical”, because then the rocket would simply be going vertical. Here, the scientists and engineers had to account for the tendency of the vehicle to rotate, with thrust at the bottom and gravity acting in the middle. And the rocket’s “trying to flatten out”. And Agnibaan SOrTeD held its position for the first 40 seconds or so, as intended.

“The next big goal is to go to orbit,” Ravichandran says. That means going up to about 400 km from mean sea level. The data from this first test has boosted everyone’s confidence so much that Agnikul is talking to potential customers to see if it can include some commercial payload straight away in the first orbital launch.



They are also being more aggressive with their timelines now, looking to add certain secondary objectives that were originally planned for much later to the very next orbital mission—as early as April or May next year. In the longer run, building a reusable rocket is also something to consider.

As Agnibaan lifted off, “it was surreal to see in a flash, these three people at mission control, to see how these entrepreneurs have evolved”, Rajaram recalls. “They are 200 now and they’ve done what they’ve done.”

In this case, surely, the best is yet to come.