Full Story of India's First Private Orbital Rocket

Skyroot Aerospace: The Full Story Behind India's First Private Orbital Rocket

On 18th July 2026, at 12:05 PM IST, a rocket built entirely by a private Indian company lifted off from Sriharikota and reached orbit on its very first attempt. With that single flight, India became only the third country in the world — after the United States and China — to have a privately built rocket successfully reach orbit. The company behind it, Skyroot Aerospace, has been quietly building toward this moment for eight years.

This post covers the whole journey: who started Skyroot, every major test that got them here, both of their rocket launches in full detail, and what they're planning next.

Where It All Started

Skyroot Aerospace was founded on 12th June 2018 in Hyderabad, by two former ISRO scientists — Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka. Chandana, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, had spent years working on ISRO's LVM3 rocket, nicknamed "Bahubali," which later carried India's Chandrayaan missions to the Moon. Daka, an IIT Madras graduate, brought expertise in avionics and electronics from his own time at ISRO.

Their starting question was simple: what if reaching orbit could be as routine and accessible as booking a flight? At the time, that was a genuinely bold thing to ask in India, where rocket-building had been the exclusive domain of the government for over five decades.

The company began with a team of just ten people, incubated at T-Hub in Hyderabad and supported by T-Works, with early seed funding of $1.5 million from entrepreneur Mukesh Bansal in June 2018. The timing mattered: in May 2020, the Indian government announced major space-sector reforms opening the industry to private players, and the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) was set up shortly after as the regulator overseeing companies like Skyroot.

Since then, growth has been rapid. Skyroot now operates out of its own "Infinity Campus" in Hyderabad, employs a team of more than 1,000 people, and has raised a total of roughly $160 million across multiple funding rounds from investors including GIC, Temasek, and Sherpalo Ventures. In May 2026, that funding pushed Skyroot's valuation to $1.1 billion, making it India's first space-tech unicorn.

Every one of Skyroot's rockets is named "Vikram," after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, widely regarded as the father of India's space programme.

The Long Road of Tests: How They Got Rocket-Ready

Long before any rocket flew, Skyroot spent years quietly testing and re-testing every component of its Vikram launch vehicles. Here's the trial history that most people never see:

• 21 September 2020: Several Ballistic Evaluation Motors were fired to fine-tune and qualify the solid propellant formulation for the Vikram series.
• 22 December 2020: Skyroot test-fired "Kalam-5," a scaled-down solid rocket stage demonstrator, at a facility in Nagpur — a 24-second burn reaching 5.3 kN of peak thrust. This was the first time a private Indian company had designed, built, and tested a solid rocket propulsion stage.
• 20 June 2021: The third stage of Vikram-1, called Kalam-100, completed its Proof Pressure Test.
• 19 May 2022: Kalam-100 completed a full-duration static test fire — a major milestone validating the stage that would eventually fly.
• 4 April 2023: Skyroot tested "Dhawan-II," a fully 3D-printed cryogenic engine intended for the upper stage of the more powerful Vikram-2, in a 200-second fire-endurance test.
• 21 June 2023: The "Raman-I" engine, used for roll and attitude control on Vikram-1, completed its flight qualification testing.
• August 2025: In one of the biggest milestones of the whole programme, Skyroot static-fired "Kalam-1200" — the first-stage booster of Vikram-1, and the largest solid rocket motor ever built by an Indian private company. At 11 metres long and loaded with 30 tonnes of propellant, it generates close to 1,200 kN of peak thrust — roughly ten times the thrust of a single Boeing 737 engine.
• October 2025: Skyroot successfully tested the Orbital Adjustment Module for Vikram-1's upper stage.
• November 2025: Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the flight-ready configuration of Vikram-1 at the inauguration of Skyroot's Infinity Campus in Hyderabad.

That's nearly five years of ground testing before Vikram-1 ever left the launch pad — which is fairly typical for orbital rockets, but rarely gets much public attention compared to the launches themselves.

Mission Prarambh: India's First Private Rocket Launch (2022)

Skyroot's first actual launch came on 18th November 2022, with a rocket called Vikram-S — a single-stage, solid-fuel suborbital rocket, roughly 6 metres tall and weighing 545 kg. The mission was named "Prarambh," meaning "the beginning."

Lifting off at 11:30 AM IST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Vikram-S reached a peak altitude of around 89 km and a top speed of Mach 5.07, before splashing down roughly 125 km away in the Bay of Bengal after a flight lasting just over five minutes. It carried three customer payloads on board — from Space Kidz India, N-Space Tech India, and BazoomQ, a company based in Armenia.

This flight made Skyroot the first private Indian company to design, build, and launch a rocket, and it validated several core technologies — including solid propulsion, carbon-composite airframes, and 3D-printed components — that would later go into Vikram-1.

Mission Aagaman: Reaching Orbit (2026)

Fast forward to this year. Vikram-1, Skyroot's flagship orbital launch vehicle, is a much bigger and more capable machine — a four-stage rocket standing about 20 metres tall and 1.7 metres wide. Its first three stages run on solid propellant (including the Kalam-1200 booster and Kalam-100 third stage mentioned earlier), while its upper "kick stage" uses a liquid-fuelled engine called Raman-1 for precise orbital insertion.

After being shipped from Skyroot's headquarters to the launch site in April 2026 and reaching the launch pad in early July, Vikram-1 lifted off on 18th July 2026 at 12:05 PM IST on its debut flight, named Mission Aagaman ("arrival"). It reached an orbit roughly 450 km above Earth at a 60-degree inclination.

On board were several technology demonstration payloads from Grahaa Space, Cosmoserve, and DCubed, along with Skyroot's own SCOPE satellite. The flight also carried two symbolic payloads: a small 18-karat gold rocket crafted by artist Ajay Kumar Mattewada, and a piece called "Cosmic Bloom," made using lab-grown gems by Cosmos Diamonds. All payloads reached orbit successfully.

This single flight made Skyroot the first private company after ISRO itself to place a payload into orbit from Indian soil — and made India the third country in the world, after the US and China, with a demonstrated private orbital launch capability.

What's Next: Vikram-2 and Beyond

Skyroot isn't slowing down after this win. The company has said it wants to scale up quickly toward monthly launch cadence, aiming to turn Vikram-1 into a reliable, repeatable commercial service rather than a one-off achievement.

The next big step is Vikram-2, currently targeted for its first flight in 2027. It's a noticeably more powerful vehicle than Vikram-1 — designed to carry up to 900 kg to Low Earth Orbit and 600 kg to Sun-synchronous Orbit, compared to Vikram-1's 350 kg and 260 kg respectively. Vikram-2 will be powered in part by the more advanced "Dhawan-II" 3D-printed cryogenic engine, which completed its own endurance testing back in 2023, and is designed for greater payload capacity and multi-orbit flexibility.

Commercially, Skyroot is positioning itself in the global sub-1,000 kg small-satellite launch market — a segment valued at around $5 billion in 2025 — where it will compete with companies like Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra Space in the US, and i-Space, Galactic Energy, and CAS Space in China.

Why This Matters

For years, India's space programme meant one thing: ISRO. What Skyroot has done — going from a ten-person team in a Hyderabad garage-style startup to becoming the first private Indian company to reach orbit, in under eight years — signals a genuine structural shift in how India builds and launches rockets.

It also matters for the country's ambitions in the fast-growing small-satellite launch market, where being able to offer dedicated, on-demand orbital access (rather than waiting months for a shared ride on a larger rocket) is a real competitive advantage. Skyroot's next test won't be a single dramatic launch — it'll be proving they can do this again and again, reliably, on a commercial schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Skyroot Aerospace? Pawan Kumar Chandana (CEO) and Naga Bharath Daka (COO), both former ISRO scientists, founded the company in Hyderabad in June 2018.

What's the difference between Vikram-S and Vikram-1? Vikram-S was a smaller, single-stage suborbital test rocket launched in 2022 to prove out core technologies. Vikram-1 is the full four-stage orbital rocket, capable of actually placing satellites into orbit, which had its first flight in July 2026.

Is Skyroot the same as ISRO? No. Skyroot is a private company, though it works closely with ISRO and the regulator IN-SPACe, using ISRO's launch facilities at Sriharikota under approved agreements — similar to how private companies elsewhere use government-owned spaceports.

What is Vikram-1 named after? All of Skyroot's rockets are named after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, considered the father of India's space programme.

When is the next Skyroot launch? Skyroot has said it wants to move toward monthly launches following Vikram-1's success, though exact dates for the next flight hadn't been announced as of publishing. The next major vehicle milestone is Vikram-2's debut, targeted for 2027.

Final Thoughts

What makes Skyroot's story compelling isn't just the successful launch — it's the sheer amount of unglamorous, repeated testing that came before it. Ballistic evaluation motors in 2020, proof pressure tests in 2021, static fires in 2022, 2023, and 2025 — years of incremental, mostly unnoticed work that all had to go right for eleven minutes of flight on 18th July 2026 to succeed. For a company that started with ten people and a simple question about making space more accessible, that's a pretty remarkable eight years.

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Sources referenced:

• SpaceNews – Skyroot prepares for first orbital launch attempt
• Space.com – Vikram-1 debut launch coverage
• CNBC (Inside India newsletter) – Skyroot's entry into the global launch market
• Skyroot.in – Official mission pages for Prarambh and Aagaman, and company "About" page
• Wikipedia – Skyroot Aerospace, Vikram-S, Vikram-I, and Vikram rocket family pages
• Satellite Today – Skyroot Aerospace launch success coverage
• Whalesbook – Skyroot's maiden orbital launch coverage
• The Brand Hopper – Skyroot Aerospace history and unicorn story
• Siasat / Republic World / Orbital Today – Kalam-1200 and pre-launch test coverage
• Inc42 / Tracxn – Skyroot funding and company profile data
• Deccan Herald / ISRO.gov.in – Mission Prarambh official coverage