The lead-up to Agnikul Cosmos, a space start-up, was circuitous and unconventional. Its founders—Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM—both engineers, worked abroad in diverse fields before returning to India to take the ‘space’ plunge. The company was founded in 2017 with the support of IIT Madras.
Srinath’s fascination with space goes back to his childhood days when he used to watch PSLV launches from his terrace in Chennai. He holds a degree in electrical engineering. After a decade in finance on Wall Street and an aerospace engineering degree in the United States, he returned to India.
“There is a lot of respect for ISRO and Indian space tech in the US. So I realised that I should just come back and do something here,” he told Bharat Shakti Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale.
Moin, Srinath’s childhood cricket friend, has studied and worked in Australia. He returned to Chennai and established a manufacturing business in cosmetics.
“I was really bored with what I was doing. I wanted to do something more meaningful,” says Moin. He describes the move as a calculated bet on an industry that was poised to evolve, drawing inspiration from the relationship between NASA and SpaceX.
The company makes reusable launch vehicles, something that hasn’t been done before in India. Reuse brings a very interesting aspect of decoupling production from launch, says Srinath. “Rockets are usually considered use-and-throw systems. You design it for one-time use and then throw it away. But that’s not how we make it a business. If one rocket can be used even 10 times, we start making a lot more profit.”
Agnikul’s single-piece, 3D-printed rocket engines eliminate the need for thousands of conventionally assembled components and numerous welds. The company says an engine that could take months to manufacture conventionally can be produced in approximately three days.
Moin believes the opportunity extends well beyond rockets. He sees space becoming a platform for data-driven decisions and emerging industries, including pharmaceutical research, in-space manufacturing and data centres.
Agnikul has ambitions larger than building a launch vehicle. It is to help create a commercially sustainable space ecosystem. “There are ways to utilise space. I think once people get used to the environment, we don’t know what more could be explored out of it,” says Moin.
