How a 28-Year-Old Team Built India’s First Private Orbital Rocket

“Rockets are brutal, you have no room for error at all. It was like a 16-minute thriller movie.”

For Pawan Kumar Chandana, Co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace, Vikram-1’s successful orbital mission was 16 minutes of extraordinary pressure, but one successful launch does not prove everything.

“It gives you confidence,” Pawan says. “But you have to be consistently successful.” And for Skyroot, that is the bigger challenge now.

In the first episode of The Spark Series we meet Pawan at Skyroot Aerospace’s Max-Q in Hyderabad to explore what it really takes to build a globally competitive deep tech company from India? From starting with no initial capital, no clear private-space policy and limited talent, to successfully developing and launching India’s first private orbital rocket.

Catch the Spark series in the run up to #TechSparks2026 where we explore the people, places and technologies defining India's New Tech Order. From rocket factories and robotics labs to AI studios and deeptech startups , we're stepping inside the places where tomorrow's technologies are being imagined, engineered and built.

TechSparks 2026 | Oct 13th,14th ,15th | Taj Yeshwantpur, Bengaluru

https://techsparks.yourstory.com/2026/