Bengaluru: Bellatrix Aerospace is one of India’s earliest space startups to have procured a contract from ISRO even before its founders had a college degree. Their core? Manufacturing thrusters — devices that help satellites fly, mostly helping them stay in their orbital path.
Their newest product is the shiniest weapon in their arsenal, the nano thrusters. These are the world’s smallest thrusters, less than 5cmx5cm, and cater to nanosatellites. Nanothrusters are small chips, smaller in size than a one-rupee coin.
The company is also working on emission-free “green” fuel for its thrusters and engines.
“We have covered the entire gamut of thrusters required for small satellites,” said co-founder Yashas Karanam. “You bring me a satellite the size of this room, we have a thruster for it.”
India’s New Space is finally finding its orbit, learning to fly side by side with the old space and it is startups like Bellatrix that are charting this new territory, armed with innovation and enterprise. The Bengaluru startup’s journey runs parallel to the opening of the space sector in India and is reflective of the gamut of possibilities and new knowledge indigenous companies can bring to the table. But funding for such startups remains a difficult path to tread as investors stay wary of putting money in a sector they find complex.
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Small beginnings, big dreams
In 2014, then ISRO chair Kiran Kumar was attending the convocation of Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering in Mysuru. As Kumar delivered his speech, a 17-year-old third year student waited eagerly for him to finish so he could rush with his friend and make their pitch about a project they had been passionately working on.
The duo had been trying to get ISRO’s attention for some time with their propulsion system, which just used water. But as college students, they had been unsuccessful.
At the convocation ceremony, Karanam decided to approach Kumar with visual material. He and Ganapathy carried pictures of their thrusters along with printed notes on its capabilities. They braved the crowd of students, academicians, and other staff before putting their material straight in to the hands of the ISRO chief. Kumar was immediately curious. After taking a look at their material, he responded, “This is exactly what ISRO has been looking for!”
As final year students, the youngsters had built a type of thruster never used before in India for satellites.
Studying in different engineering colleges in Coimbatore and Mysore, respectively, Rohan Ganapathy and Yashas Karanam met as family friends and found the project that could bind them.
In 2014, then ISRO chair Kiran Kumar was attending the convocation of Sri Jayachamarajendra
College of Engineering in Mysuru. As Kumar delivered his speech, a 17-year-old third year student waited eagerly for him to finish so he could rush with his friend and make their pitch about a project they had been passionately working on
“Rohan had already been working on a water-based electric propulsion project, and I joined as a small contributor and tried out a few things,” said Karanam. “The project was a success, and we decided to convert that in to a company in 2015.”
Three other fellow students from Ganapthy’s Hindusthan College in Coimbatore who had been part of the young co-founders’ student project teams came onboard as engineers.
What followed the meeting with Kumar was the formation of several committees to evaluate the technical and technological potential of Bellatrix’s product, because ISRO had previously never worked with a private startup before.
“There were several rounds of evaluation, and a lot of skepticism at the beginning, but somehow after every meeting, they (ISRO) gained more confidence in us,” said Karanam, adding that ISRO were especially eager to work with such young engineers.
Bellatrix went on to sign an MoU with ISRO to build thrusters and propulsion systems for small satellites. They set up offices within the campus of Indian Institute of Science in a small room, close to the lab they used to test their thrusters. From here, they worked on the designs of several prototypes for their various thrusters, before obtaining enough funding to move offices twice, to accommodate their growing team of approximately 70.
They initially had operations in Coimbatore where Ganapathy had studied, but now all their industrial operations have moved to a factory in Peenya, on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
Bellatrix thrusters come in a variety of four and are either chemically or electrically powered.
After the Jal thruster that uses water for fuel, they built a Hall effect thruster series named Aria, which utilises electrical and magnetic forces. Their latest before this was the Rudra series, which uses a proprietary green fuel; they call these varieties the green monopropellant thrusters.
“The nano thrusters will be used for station keeping where the small deviations in orbits are corrected, during de-orbiting manoeuvres to burn up the satellite in the atmosphere, or when the satellites are briefly moved away to avoid collisions,” said Karanam. These thrusters can be joined together to produce more lift, like all their designs can. They can lift up to 20kg and move it around in orbit. They can lift more, but “we have better solutions for increased weight” said Karanam.
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A piece of cheaper space tech solution
After establishing its relevance before the Indian space agency, Bellatrix is turning a new page in their journey. Its founders envision other uses for their tiny thrusters. Their Pushpak Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) is a platform that can move small satellites weighing up to 750kg to various orbits after they have been deployed by rockets, and uses their thrusters for power.
Launch vehicles or rockets use various stages to propel themselves up, discarding pent up fuel stage parts as they fly. Typically, the last stage is the fourth stage of a rocket like the PSLV, which is the engine within the top most part of its nose. Inside the nose’s protective covering, called the payload fairing, sit the satellites. The engine in this stage uses its power to manoeuver itself to release the satellites one after the other.
However, with Pushpak, these satellites can be released wherever it is cheapest to, and can then be ferried over to their designated orbit.
The vehicle, which is being tested, will feature a hybrid propulsion system of electric and green fuel, along with solar panels.
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Building a support system ground up
Bellatrix draws its name from one of the brightest stars in the Orion constellation, reflective of the domain it works in. But not many know that their beginnings were substantially dimmer.
Small, young, private companies like Bellatrix are called as New Space, as opposed to players like ISRO that is government funded and “old space” or a larger corporation like L&T that has regularly been undertaking manufacturing contracts with the national space agency. The last few decades has seen a tremendous boost in private space technology. While competitive markets like the US have multiple private players already functional, like SpaceX, India is just waking up.
And the beginnings for these companies is characterised by a lot of scrambling, because there still isn’t enough money flowing into the sector.
“What is happening in the space sector on the investment front is that founders end up spending a lot of time educating investors, eating into bandwidth,” said Ganapathy, calling it a serious problem faced by New Space companies.
Foreign investment in space is properly opening up only now in India, with a functioning Space Policy released last year after multiple back and forth by ISRO and nodal agencies. Indian investors are yet to stomach the risk required for building space projects, it appears.
What is happening in the space sector on the investment front is that founders end up spending a lot of time educating investors, eating into bandwidth
— Rohan Ganapathy, cofounder, Bellatrix Aerospace
Manufacturing a single satellite means investment worth crores. “Building components that can fly into space with as low weight as possible requires years of design, fabrication, development, and testing, with “failure after failure of materials”, said Karanam.
Bellatrix’s business model is to commercially sell thrusters to satellite customers. But space businesses involve higher funding and longer project timelines because of the nature and expenses of testing, customising new materials to make something hardy enough that’s fit for space.
Bellatrix is the only Indian space startup to have received an FDI investment. In 2019, the space company raised $3million in pre-series A round, and subsequently $8 million in 2022 for its space propulsion project.
However, when they began, they relied on competitions and grants, starting off with about Rs 90 lakh from grant agencies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds from private organisations like JSW Steel.
The grant route of raising cash comes with its own set of challenges.
Smaller space companies typically rely on grants from the government, like the IDEX grant, owing to their overlap with defence applications. These grants offer up to Rs 25 crore, but require the small startup founders to match the amount in order to qualify. But this route is not easy for small startups as they don’t have enough funds to put on the table and qualify for the grant.
“Contracts should be based on technology readiness. There is a lot of internal demand for innovative technology, but systemic mechanisms — even though they have improved — are hindering growth. So most companies tend to look for global expansion to attract foreign investment,” said Ganapathy. Bellatrix itself is looking to set up headquarters abroad for what Ganapathy called “investor confidence”.
The propulsion and thruster company operates in an exclusive space, that is the products it manufactures are unique. This means all their manufacturing is in-house, making the process of manufacturing thrusters almost entirely indigenous. Bellatrix has a factory within the same city that keeps costs in check.
They still have access to labs at IISc, where the founders had set up their very first office after college. But the company has developed powerful, indigenous facilities in Peenya for thruster testing, which occurs in vacuum chambers, as well as for fabrication.
“We and ISRO are the only two people to have testing facilities for thrusters in India,” said Karanam with a smile.
At present, he and Ganapathy are busy working towards expanding their office in the US and Europe. Their pioneering products are not just getting attention in India, but are already gathering enough “traction”, as they say, for the team to work on opening sales and operations in outside of India, where customers are likely to lap them up much quicker.
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In the belly of innovation
Walking into the new offices of Bellatrix Aerospace in Bengaluru feels very much like stepping on to the set of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The blue and silver lined walls with a mirror at the very end gives a sense of false depth to the office that is shaped like the perimeter of a square.
Off to the side is the meeting room where the founders huddle. There is a television on the ceiling, beaming down blue skies with fluffy white clouds over the table. Another TV hangs on the wall. A powerpoint presentation of the work Bellatrix does is full of images of mechanical parts – hard to comprehend upon first look, but once understood, quite awe inspiring.
The company is a promising example of the boom in the New Space
industry in India. Just like its founders, other space companies such as Skyroot aerospace, Agnikul cosmos, Dhruva space, and SatSuretoo have young founders barely out of college
Bellatrix and its tens of young employees sit designing and writing away codes, designs etc at their new and permanent office, surrounded by science fiction imagery and models of palm-sized thrusters. These are a mix of chemical, mechanical, electrical and electronic, automobile, and even nuclear engineers, working every day at multi-disciplinary technology that is heralding India into its space age.
The company is a promising example of the boom in the New Space industry in India. Just like its founders, other space companies such as Skyroot aerospace, Agnikul cosmos, Dhruva space, and SatSuretoo have young founders barely out of college. And these companies tackle big dreams, because they have the know-how for technology that did not exist before.
“You can easily tell that the space industry is poised for a very large growth. After our name was first made public, wherever we went like expos, people started approaching us,” said Karanam.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)