Paris: When Indian entrepreneur Awais Ahmed founded his satellite startup in Bangalore in 2019, his country was still a year away from opening the space industry to the private sector. Since then, the private space sector has taken off in India, joining a rapidly growing global market. There are now 190 Indian space start-ups, twice as many as a year earlier, with private investments jumping by 77% between 2021 and 2022, according to Deloitte consultancy. Prior to the 2020 opening up of the sector, “all Indian space activity was under the supervision of the ISRO space agency, which managed absolutely everything,” said Isabelle Sourbes-Verger, an Indian space sector expert at France’s National Scientific Research Centre. Before the reform, private companies could only act as suppliers for the agency.

Source: The Star October 02, 2023 13:16 UTC