‘Aim to double revenue in 5 years’

Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of Isro, which is expecting to make small rockets, hopes to capture over 10 per cent share in the global small satellite industry and grab a part of the PSLV technology market in the next few years. In an interaction with T E Narasimhan, the company’s chairman-cum-managing director Rakesh Sashibhusan speaks about the opportunities, challenges and targets in India’s space commerce industry. Edited excerpts:

What are the opportunities and challenges for a service provider?

The opportunity is that India being a major space-faring nation, all the technologies related to this are available here. An Indian company can leverage these technologies and Antrix is coming out with programmes like outsourcing of small satellite technology, among others. It can use Isro’s expertise to grab a small portion of the market. Since launch services are also there in India, many companies in other parts of the world may be interested to outsource the job of assembling and launching satellites to India.

What is your game plan?

Today, there is a gap between demand and launch due to capacity constraints for launchers. The segment of small rockets and PSLV technology of Isro are outsourced to industry. We want to address the requirement of many companies around the world in this, putting up various applications and satellites into space.

You have said that your commercial launches are slightly lower in number. Where do you see it going?

The aim of developing the small satellite is to capture a larger share of this business, which is expected to touch $18 billion in the next 10 years for small satellite launch alone. This is a huge market and if you are able to position a particular launch vehicle with appropriate pricing in the market, you can definitely capture a good share of it. Even if you look at a 10 per cent of this market, it is huge. With the kind of capacities that we are planning, we should probably be able generate ~15-20 billion from the small satellite launch services alone.

Experts say that a medium launch vehicle will be a good bet for the future if you want to be cost effective, instead of going for small launches. What is your take?

We are doing a market study on that, and this small rocket is not really small, in the sense that it will be able to take multiple satellites into orbit. We are looking at micro satellites and cube sats with this particular type of launch vehicle. With this kind of launch vehicle, we will be able to offer a very attractive proposition to the market.

Currently, you have a 7 percent market share in launch service. With small rockets coming up and your plans to market the PSLV, what would you expect your share to be in launch services?

Launch services is a $5.5-6 billion market globally, and it is supposed to register a two digit growth in the near future. We have an immediate target of 10 per cent in small satellite launch vehicles and then we will see what opportunities are there with other such aerial vehicles. We will gradually lay out plans to increase our production accordingly. Our other programmes, including the GSLV,G SLV Mark-III, all look good.

What is your vision for An trix in the next fiveyears?

In five years we would like to double our revenue, at least. Currently it is ~20 billion. We have laid out plans to double the revenue and capture a larger share of the market.