Bharat Innovates 2026: From an IISc lab to orbit, meet the startup powering India's satellite economy

Getting a satellite into orbit is only half the problem. Once it gets there, propulsion determines almost everything that follows: how it manoeuvres, maintains position, deploys precisely, and extends its operational life. For decades, the industry relied heavily on hydrazine, a toxic and expensive chemical propellant that poses significant manufacturing, handling, and environmental challenges. With thousands of satellites now expected to enter low Earth and geostationary orbit in the coming years, the demand for cleaner, safer, and more efficient alternatives has never been more urgent. It is precisely this kind of deep, unglamorous infrastructure problem that the Ministry of Education's Bharat Innovates 2026 initiative was built to spotlight, connecting India's most capable deep-tech founders with global investors and partners at an event in Nice, France, from 14 to 16 June 2026, as part of the India-France Year of Innovation.

Among the startups selected for this platform is Bengaluru-based Bellatrix Aerospace, founded in 2015 at the Indian Institute of Science by Rohan Ganapathy and Yashas Karanam. IISc is among India's most research-intensive universities, and one of the institutions that has helped drive India's remarkable rise in global university rankings over the past decade, a rise reflected in the growing number of Indian institutions now featuring in the QS World University Rankings. Alongside policy reforms like NEP 2020 and international research collaborations under SPARC, it is this institutional ecosystem that Bharat Innovates 2026, spanning 13 frontier sectors including Space, Defence, Advanced Computing, and Next-Generation Communications, is designed to amplify and take global.

Bellatrix Aerospace set out to rethink how satellites move and operate in space. The company's focus was not merely to improve existing propulsion technologies, but to develop systems capable of fundamentally changing what satellite missions could achieve, from nanosatellites to large communication satellites headed for geostationary orbit.

Building India's most complete propulsion portfolio

Over the past decade, Bellatrix Aerospace has built a propulsion portfolio spanning multiple technologies, each designed to solve a specific gap in satellite mobility and in-space operations. Among its most notable innovations is Jal, the company's Microwave Plasma Thruster, which uses water as propellant. Bellatrix says it is the world's first privately built plasma thruster to do so. The system is lightweight, corrosion-free, and designed to last significantly longer than conventional electric propulsion systems, addressing one of the satellite industry's most persistent reliability concerns.

The company has also developed Rudra, a high-performance green thruster intended as a direct replacement for hydrazine-based chemical propulsion. It delivers comparable performance without the toxicity associated with traditional propellants. Arka, Bellatrix's Hall Effect Thruster, is designed for extended operational life in orbit, while Fingernail, built for the rapidly expanding small satellite market, is compact enough to fit on the tip of a finger.

Proving it in space

For Bellatrix Aerospace, the defining milestone has been demonstrating that its propulsion systems can perform reliably in the harsh conditions of space.

The company successfully completed three green propulsion firings in orbit, validating Rudra's performance under real mission conditions. Bellatrix is also the only Indian startup that ISRO has collaborated with for joint technology development in electric propulsion, a partnership that reflects the growing credibility of its work within India's space ecosystem.

In October 2024, Bellatrix Aerospace signed a contract with NewSpace India Limited, ISRO's commercial arm, for the integration of Pushpak, the company's Orbital Transfer Vehicle, into NSIL launch missions. Pushpak is designed as a multi-mission orbital platform capable of satellite deployment, in-orbit manoeuvring, and hosted payload support, offering satellite operators greater flexibility in reaching target orbits.

Building for scale

Bellatrix Aerospace recently closed a Series B funding round of $20 million led by Cactus Partners, with participation from Inflexor Ventures, Pavestone VC, GrowX Ventures, StartupXseed Ventures, Hero Enterprise, 35North Ventures, IndusBridge Ventures, and Monarch Holdings.

The company now operates across India and the United States, with flight-qualified propulsion systems, a growing global customer base, and a multimillion-dollar order backlog. It has also reduced manufacturing lead time to under six months, positioning itself to respond faster to growing demand in the satellite market.

Built on India's higher education backbone

That progress did not emerge in isolation. It came directly out of a campus that has long been at the heart of India's scientific ambition.

Ganapathy and Karanam both founded Bellatrix while at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, one of India's most research-intensive universities and an institution that consistently features in global rankings. IISc has produced generations of scientists and engineers who have gone on to define Indian research across aerospace, materials, and computing.

For Ganapathy and Karanam, the institute was not just a launchpad in name: it provided the research environment, the technical rigour, and the institutional connections that made it possible to develop flight-ready propulsion technologies from the ground up.

In the decade since its founding, Bellatrix Aerospace has evolved from a small IISc-based startup into one of India's most closely watched spacetech companies. Its growth reflects a larger shift underway in India's private space sector, where startups are increasingly building technologies once associated almost exclusively with national space programmes.

An IISc founding, a world-first water-powered thruster, and a contract with ISRO's commercial arm: this is the kind of story the Ministry of Education's spotlight is built to carry. Research-led ventures, born inside Indian institutions, are ready to take on the world.