India’s space regulator and promoter, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), has announced the first beneficiaries of its Technology Adoption Fund (TAF), selecting Astrobase Space Technologies, SatSure Analytics India and TM2SPACE Technologies for financial support. The development marks the first deployment of the ₹500-crore fund launched earlier to help private companies move promising space technologies from the prototype stage to commercial deployment.
The three companies emerged from a multi-stage evaluation involving experts from ISRO, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), academia, industry bodies and IN-SPACe, showing the strategic importance attached to the programme.
The selection is significant because it addresses one of the biggest challenges facing India’s rapidly growing spacetech ecosystem – the gap between innovation and commercialization. Although India has witnessed a surge in private space startups since the sector was opened in 2020, many companies have struggled to secure capital for scaling technologies beyond proof-of-concept. Therefore, via TAF, IN-SPACe provides funding support of up to 60% of project costs for startups and MSMEs and up to 40% for larger companies, with assistance capped at ₹25 crore per project.
The programme aims to reduce dependence on imported space technologies, strengthen domestic intellectual property creation and accelerate the development of market-ready products across launch systems, satellites and downstream space services.
Among the selected projects, Astrobase Space Technologies is tackling one of the most technologically demanding areas of the space industry – rocket propulsion. The Bengaluru-based startup will develop an 800-kilonewton closed-cycle liquid rocket engine powered by liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The reusable engine is being designed for medium- and heavy-lift launch vehicles and future orbital stages. An 800 kN-class engine places the project in a category capable of supporting serious commercial launch ambitions.
SatSure Analytics India, the second startup selected under IN-SPACe’s Technology Adoption Fund, will develop Dhaarini, a Large Earth Observation Model (LOM) designed to serve as a foundational AI platform for analysing satellite and drone imagery. The model is expected to support applications ranging from agriculture and infrastructure monitoring to climate risk assessment, disaster response and financial services. The spacetech company secured a ₹24.6 crore ($2.57 million) grant from IN-SPACe.
Meanwhile, Hyderabad-based TM2SPACE Technologies has been selected to develop an indigenous AI-powered star tracker system, a crucial component for satellite navigation and attitude determination. The company plans to build two variants – StarSense Lite for CubeSats and StarSense Pro for satellites above 50 kilograms. Star trackers determine a spacecraft’s orientation by observing stars and comparing them with onboard reference catalogues, allowing precise pointing accuracy. This capability is essential for high-resolution Earth-imaging satellites, communication platforms and scientific missions. TM2SPACE is already active in developing low-Earth-orbit infrastructure, orbital computing systems and satellite subsystems, and has demonstrated onboard computing technologies in orbit. Together, the projects cover three of the most valuable layers of the space economy – access to space, operation in space and monetization of space-derived data.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
