Article Posted on : - Oct 28, 2010

India's $1.25 billion space industry is poised to take centre stage in the coming years. The growth prospect of the space industry is evident from the fact that the Indian Government has increased the budget allocation for it by nearly 35 percent.

As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has lined up a number of ambitious space programmes in near future, India has certainly thumped its feet in the global space market with a bang.

The country today offers wide-ranging products and services to domestic as well as international customers starting from satellite imagery and data to leasing out transponders and providing satellite launch platforms.

To look after the steadily expanding commercial overtures of ISRO, Indian Government has set up Antrix Corporation Limited in 1992.

Working as the commercial and marketing wing of ISRO, Antrix has widened the base of ISRO’s activities, its products and services in the international aerospace market. Its prominent customers’ list today includes the US, Europe, Russia and China among others.

Antrix’s annual revenues have been pegged at around Rs 1,000 crore. As its success saga has gone manifold, the Corporation has acquired the prestigious ‘Miniratna’ status in 2008.

ISRO, with the help of Antrix, launched third countries’ satellites for the first time in 1999. The space agency’s workhorse, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C2, successfully placed in orbit Germany’s DLR-TUBSAT satellite and South Korea’s KITSAT-3 satellite.

The satellites, weighing 45 kg and 107 kg respectively, opened up a new source of revenue for ISRO and Antrix.

The two organisations have successfully launched a total of 25 small and large satellites for foreign countries to date.

Leveraging on ISRO’s rich expertise in space science and space technology, Antrix offers three standardised flight proven satellite platforms in the weight class of 1000 to 3500 kg. These platforms, named as I-1K, I-2K and I-3K(I stands for INSAT), along with the required payload are offered as a total spacecraft.

Antrix also offers these platforms with payload supplied by European consortium EADS-Astrium as part of Antrix-Astrium alliance for meeting the requirements of global customers of commercial communication satellites.

The Corporation has certainly made the Indian space industry more lucrative by promoting ISRO’s products and services and adding more and more international customers to its list.

It has an order pipeline of Rs 3,000 crore (all types of business put together) and hopes to further expand its exchequer in the coming years.