Skyroot Aerospace Successfully Launches India's First Private Orbital Rocket

Watching Vikram-1 lift off from Sriharikota this morning genuinely gave me goosebumps. Skyroot just made India the third country in the world with private orbital launch capability — after the US and China. Let that sink in for a second.

Founded in 2018 by ex-ISRO engineers, Skyroot has gone from a suborbital test flight in 2022 to a fully orbital, four-stage rocket in under four years. Vikram-1 today carried real customer payloads on this debut flight too — not just a token test mass — and every single one of them made it to orbit. Huge congratulations to the entire Skyroot team, especially to founders Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka who set out & dared to get the ball rolling.

I’ve always been excited watching ISRO launches and I’m glad there’s another player on the calendar now.