Indian spacetech startups growing faster than ever, ready for perfect lift off: AWS

Las Vegas, Nov 28 (IANS) The friendly government policies and timely investments have given a much-needed boost to startups in the aerospace sector compared to other countries and the country is ripe for tremendous growth in the space industry over the next decade, a top AWS executive has said.

The Indian space economy is currently valued at around Rs 6,700 crore ($8.4 billion) with a 2 per cent share in the global space economy.

As per estimates by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), the country’s space economy is poised to reach Rs 35,200 crore ($44 billion) by 2033 with nearly 8 per cent of the global share.

Clint Crosier, Director, Aerospace and Satellite, AWS, told IANS during the sidelines of the ‘AWS re: Invent 2023’ conference here that he is very bullish on India and is witnessing a faster rate of space startups being created in the country over the last year.

“We have seen dozens and dozens of new space startups being established in India. This is because of the new government policies and investments, and the goal to increase by 4 times the amount of its share of the global space industry,” Crosier emphasised.

In September, AWS signed a strategic MoU with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and IN-SPACe to support space-tech innovations through cloud computing. This collaboration will give space startups, research institutes and students access to cutting edge cloud technologies that accelerate the development of new solutions in the space sector.

“We look forward to helping customers in India build space-tech solutions to make life on Earth better,” Shalini Kapoor, Director and Chief Technologist, Public Sector, AWS India and South Asia, had said.

The three-way collaboration follows the recent approval of the Indian Space Policy, 2023 which provides a strategic roadmap for the growth and development of India’s space programme and ambitions.

Crosier said that the company is working from the smallest startups all the way up to the government organisations to help them improve their capabilities in the space sector.

“We’re supporting and working with a company called SatSure in India, which is using space-based data, and geospatial analytics to help with climate management decisions within the government in the country,” he told IANS.

SatSure is able to process those volumes of data, and turn large data into real-time, knowledge and insights by operating at the scope and speed of high performance compute and artificial intelligence and machine learning on AWS cloud.

With at least 140 registered space-tech startups, India stands to transform the planet’s connection to the final frontier.

According to a latest report by The New York Times, startups in India have ambitious plans for capitalising on the burgeoning demand of small satellites in low-earth orbits.

The startups like Skyroot Aerospace, Dhruva Space and Pixxel are among a cluster of startups that have been actively and closely working with the ISRO. The government has opened up the space sector for private players.

In June during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US, the White House said that Modi and American President Joe Biden “called for enhanced commercial collaboration between the US and Indian private sectors in the entire value chain of the space economy”.

Crosier was recently in India and saw a great momentum going on in the spacetech sector.

“We continue to sit down with the Indian startups. We continue to meet with them and understand their problems, looking at Cloud-based tools and capabilities and figure out where Ccloud can solve some of their problems,” he noted.

(Nishant Arora can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in)

–IANS

na/ksk