SUSMITA MOHANTY
Earth2Orbit
WHO: India’s first private space entrepreneur, she lives and talks space. She co-founded her third global venture, Earth2Orbit or E2O.
DONE THAT: Her company facilitates launch services and sells value-added satellite imagery data. It has created concepts for transporting humans to the moon and Mars, space mission simulators, prototypes of living capsules and space suits for future astronauts.
DREAM: Human flights; to bring lot of business to the PSLV rocket; see India get at least 25 per cent of the world’s space business, estimated to be around $ 300 billion.
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NARAYAN PRASAD
Dhruva Space
WHO: Bengaluru boy Narayan Prasad (27), and fellow space buff Sanjay Nekkanti (25), met in Europe four years ago when they were doing their prestigious double-degree Erasmus Mundus Space Master programme in Sweden and France. They had won the French Government’s EGIDE scholarship for which just 25 to 40 students qualify from around the world. They decided to return to India and start Dhruva Space in 2012. Dhruva’s small core team has worked on student satellite projects of Indian universities and its services in drones, and high-altitude scientific study balloons used by professional bodies.
DONE THAT: Dhruva has a MoU with Berlin Space Technologies for possible make-in-India small satellites.
DREAM: Dhruva wants to build small, 10-to-100-kilo satellites and platforms to assemble and test them. Its portfolio reads like that of a small space agency: solutions to develop small satellites, launch services, ground stations, downlinks, drones and critical communication systems that the military uses.
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GADHADAR REDDY
NoPo Nanotechnologies P. Ltd
WHO: A space and nanotechnology enthusiast, Gadhadar heard the words ‘not possible’ so often in his field that he gave the name to his start-up in Bengaluru in 2011: NoPo Nanotechnologies India P Ltd. NoPo did come out with the know-how to make space-quality SWCNT (single walled carbon nanotubes) — extremely small materials with amazing uses.
DONE THAT: As a student, he created a prize one-stop search place for all cloud software for any task. He says his company helps other companies to make products using carbon nanotech tubes.
DREAM: To combine his two passions, space and nano, to build a satellite that can generate solar energy and beam it down to Earth.
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TEAM INDUS
WHAT: Building a spacecraft that lands on the moon. Space exploration and aviation technology.
WHO: IT professional and serial entrepreneur Rahul Narayan is its Team Lead; the team has an Air Force pilot, a management guru, a branding expert and an aerospace engineer.
DONE THAT: Team Indus, founded in 2010, is the only Indian team to win a milestone fund of $1 million (around Rs.6.15 crore) from Google Lunar XPrize. The GLXP supports more than a dozen privately funded space flight teams to launch a robotic lunar lander-rover by December 2017.
Raised funds of $35 million (around Rs.213 crore) from a host of investors in December 2014.
DREAM: Launching its spacecraft and landing its two rovers on the moon.
