A bunch of ambitious entrepreneurs came together with Rahul Narayan to form a company that's now Team Indus – and proudly holds the title of being India's first private aerospace start-up. Aiming for space and beyond in literal sense, theirs has been a challenging journey. Rahul Narayan, CEO, Team Indus, sat down with International Business Times India's Executive Editor, Danish Manzoor, to talk about his bitter-sweet experiences thus far.
The latest episode of BizTalk entails how Team Indus fought through the hurdles of an impossible dream of landing on the moon in 2011 to " the 80 percent (completion) of what we had planned at that time," as Narayan put it, during the interview.
From winning the $1 million milestone prize (Google Lunar Xprize) in 2015 to bagging the ISRO contract in 2016, Narayan shared the start-up's "fair share of ups and downs till about 2014." Now, Team Indus is determined and closer than ever to fulfill its mission to land on the moon.
Narayan also expressed the start-up's long-term goal to actively participate in "colonizing and commercializing payload delivery to the moon".
Team Indus, based out of Bengaluru, has so far raised $35 million and requires another $35 million to achieve the set deadline of March 2018 for its moon mission. Their first unmanned moon landing mission is expected to cost $65-70 million (approx. Rs 500 crore), and the team already has a 600 kg spacecraft which will carry about 60 kg of payload to the moon.
Team Indus is backed by some well-known Indian investors, including Nandan Nilekani, co-founder Infosys, Rajiv Mody, CMD and CEO of Sasken Communication Technologies, Subrata Mitra and Shekhar Kirani, partners, Accel Partners and Sharad Sharma, co-founder, iSpirit. Narayan also shared some interesting personal stories about some investors of Team Indus on BizTalk.
To know more about all the action at Team Indus watch this episode of BizTalk.
