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From Wall Street to Stars: India's Rocket Man | Srinath Ravichandran (AgniKul Cosmos)
132 Plays4 years ago
"How do a bunch of imperfect people, who are all in some sense imperfect, come together and make a perfect product?" This profound question from Srinath Ravichandran encapsulates the immense challenge and human element behind building something as complex and precise as a rocket. It’s not just about flawless engineering, but about creating systems where imperfect individuals can collectively achieve perfection, a core philosophy at AgniKul Cosmos.
Srinath Ravichandran is the Co-founder & CEO of AgniKul Cosmos, a pioneering Indian space-tech company aiming to launch orbital-class rockets like the "Agnibaan," capable of carrying payloads up to 300 kg to a 700 km orbit. He has since led AgniKul to raise over $61 million in funding, develop the world's first patented single-piece 3D-printed rocket engine (Agnilet), build a team of over 200, and establish India's first private launchpad, 'Dhanush'.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- The "Uber for Satellites" Vision: AgniKul aims to democratize space by making satellite launches on-demand, affordable, customizable, and frequent, encapsulated in their vision "Anywhere, Anytime, Affordably".
- Revolutionary 3D-Printed Engines: The core innovation, the single-piece 3D-printed Agnilet engine, drastically cuts manufacturing complexity and time (from 10-12 weeks to days for production) and significantly lowers costs.
- Mobile & Customizable Launch Solutions: The 'Dhanush' mobile launch platform, combined with the configurable Agnibaan rocket (using 4 to 7 engines), offers unique flexibility for small satellite operators.
- Early Grit & Strategic Incubation: The path involved overcoming significant hurdles, including over 400 pitch meetings to secure initial funding and convincing IIT Madras to incubate AgniKul, which was pivotal for access to R&D and talent.
- Future Trajectory: AgniKul is targeting its first orbital launch by the end of FY2025, with commercial flights planned to begin in the 2025 calendar year, and is actively researching rocket reusability for long-term sustainability.
Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction: Srinath Ravichandran & AgniKul's Mission to Democratize Space
(01:40) From Childhood Space Fascination to Electrical Engineering
(06:46) An Unexpected Detour: Journey into Wall Street Finance (10:18) Navigating the 2008 Financial Crisis & The Birth of "Rules of Thumb"
(28:26) The Pivotal Shift: From Finance Back to Aerospace Dreams
(34:56) Identifying the Market Gap: The "Aha!" Moment in Los Angeles
(41:46) Founding AgniKul: Building the Team & Securing IIT Madras Incubation
(53:27) Early Wins: First Funding & 3D Printing Rocket Engine Innovation
(01:10:17) Startup Learnings: The Art of Asking Questions & Building Scalable Systems
(01:15:51) The Economics of Rocket Launches & AgniKul's "Cab to Space" Model
(01:31:09) The Anatomy of a Rocket Launch: From Chennai to Orbit
(01:51:16) AgniKul's Grand Vision: Making Space Travel as Common as Air Travel
Hashtags for YouTube Description:
#SrinathRavichandran #AgniKulCosmos #SpaceTechIndia #IndianStartups #MakeInIndia #RocketScience #3DPrintingInSpace #AerospaceEngineering #Entrepreneurship #StartupJourney #DeepTech #FounderThesis #SpaceExploration #SatelliteLaunch #CareerPivot #WallStreetToSpace #MadeInIndiaRockets #SpaceDemocratized #FutureOfSpace #IITMadras #ISRO #TechInnovation #StartupFunding
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Transcript
Introduction to the Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay Hi, this is Arab and you are listening to the founder thesis podcast We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country and we want to learn how to build a unicorn
00:00:26
Speaker
Hi, my name is Srinath.
Srinath's Vision for Agnical Cosmos
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm one of the co-founders of this company called Agnical Cosmos, where we build small rockets.
00:00:37
Speaker
I've often seen my child pretending to be riding a rocket to explore the solar system and this is such a universal dream that some of the richest men in the world are putting in considerable resources into building rockets and escaping Earth's gravity, even if it's just for a short while.
Srinath's Journey from Chennai to Wall Street and Back
00:00:56
Speaker
and I'm really proud to present our guest for the show, a man who has built together an amazing organization that is building a Made in India rocket that will be completely 3D printed and will allow the world to launch things into space cheaply and quickly.
00:01:13
Speaker
Srinath Ravichandran has had an amazing journey, starting from his humble beginnings in Chennai to a career in Wall Street firms to finally returning back to Chennai to set up Agnikul Kosmos, which is currently just a year away from launching its first rocket to space and making India very proud.
Early Influences and Interest in Science
00:01:32
Speaker
Hear Srinath telling Akshay Dutt about how he developed an interest in science and physics.
00:01:40
Speaker
My mom is a physics teacher and my dad is a civil engineer. OK, so there was a certain respect for science while you were growing up as a kid. It must have got you curious about science as a discipline.
00:02:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Actually, it's more than just my mom and dad. I grew up with my maternal grandparents as well in the same building. And my granddad as well as an electronics engineer and
Passion for Space and Science Fiction
00:02:16
Speaker
my aunt who's my mom's sister, she's also a physics teacher. So yeah, I've had my fair dose of being exposed to science early on and particularly physics early on. Yes.
00:02:29
Speaker
Did you have like any mad scientist experiments as a kid which went wrong or something like that?
00:02:36
Speaker
No, not really. But I was actually a very avid reader of, so I think my, when I was like some 10 years old or something around that age, I got this quiz book, it was called Astronomy Quiz Book. I don't know if they still make those, should actually look it up now that I'm telling this to you. That actually is like this, you know, sort of this is actually for that age group, somewhere between, you know, eight to 12 years.
00:03:04
Speaker
and it's about all these it's like an FAQ format book so it's not like you're actually reading a textbook which feels very dense at that age right and at the same time it's also not like too little it actually has a lot of this question answers question answers and all answers are about like a couple of paragraphs something like which is the biggest planet and stuff like that yeah yeah but they go a little deeper than that but yes that's exactly right that's exactly right
00:03:27
Speaker
So that's what I did
Dreams of Aeronautical Engineering
00:03:31
Speaker
when I was really young. Yeah, no mad experience. So that sparked your passion for space. Were you also into science fiction and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. That's actually exactly how my curiosity for space started because of this Astronomy course book, I think.
00:03:53
Speaker
And then after that, there was this lending library, if you remember, those things used to exist. Yeah, yeah, I remember. So yeah, someone told me about this book called 2001, a space odyssey. So and that is actually around, I think, when I was in like seventh or eighth standard or something like that.
00:04:14
Speaker
So then that and I think after that I pretty much decided that's how to do something or the other in space. So yeah, that's that's basically how it started. And so like, did you know by the time you was like, you know, 15 or so that you want to do an aeronautical engineering or something equivalent or did you have dreams of going to the US and working at NASA or, you know, like,
00:04:40
Speaker
What kind of dreams did you have by the time you were of that age?
00:04:45
Speaker
Oh, very interesting question. So I had no idea what I should be doing, even though I loved space and everything about space. But I didn't know really what I should be doing for a profession as such. At least at that time, it seemed very different things. Oh, you love physics and aerospace, but OK, what job are you going to do? Those two seemed like very different questions.
Influential Visit to ISRO and Space Aspirations
00:05:08
Speaker
And when I was in 10th standard, there was this competition called Red Rover Goes to Mars.
00:05:13
Speaker
And that was actually conducted by NASA, I think, with ISRO. And they were actually having a few people below 15 years of age actually participate in designing, like, you know, a systems level design of a rover that will be in Mars by 2019 or so. So I got selected in that one as a national semifinalist. I actually had an opportunity to go to ISRO. That was my first actual experience of visiting ISRO and all. This was in 2000.
00:05:41
Speaker
So all that was happening. So yes, there were things about like going to Mars and all those dreams with me. But at the same time, there were a lot of reality checks happening on the personal front. Like really, what kind of a job are you going to get? If you are not able to get into ISRO, then pretty much you don't have any career for you. And all those things are also coming from a lot of people around.
00:06:05
Speaker
So I decided that probably
Educational Path in Electronics Engineering
00:06:08
Speaker
a safer route is okay. And I actually just liked all aspects of engineering. It was not space was definitely a top favorite, but it's not like only favorite. So the next favorite thing for me was electronics actually. So, and that is where I, you know, that was, that was where I actually ended up doing a bachelor's in electrical electronics engineering from College of Engineering, India in Chennai.
00:06:32
Speaker
I wanted to do aerospace, but then it felt okay to actually keep these two separate. I love physics, but I mean, I love aerospace, but I can do something in electronics. It seemed okay. It didn't seem like a big thing at that point, but that's how the story started. So, Jindy, isn't Chennai or how far is it? Yes, yes. Yeah, it's in Chennai. It's in Chennai. It was a day scholar, not a hospital.
00:06:53
Speaker
Okay, okay. So what was the placement seem like? Like by the end of your B-Tech, did you have more clarity on what you want to do and like a more practical approach towards life that I need to get a job and start earning and get my head out of the stars, so to say?
00:07:16
Speaker
practical approach. Interesting choice of words. So anyway, so yeah, I think two things happen. One thing I was very clear was that I didn't want to directly get into
00:07:29
Speaker
any job I wanted to at least make it feel like okay I've studied something for four years and I should do something in that and I actually liked what I was studying it is not like I you know completely I got into engineering because I had more clue what else to do right so it is so I like that so I was very
00:07:46
Speaker
careful about applying only for electrical engineering oriented jobs or electronics oriented jobs. Then got into ABB, the Swedish company, they make these large electrical appliances and stuff.
00:08:03
Speaker
got in there and actually I was doing motor design and drive design and all that stuff for like motors that used that are used in huge industries like I remember actually working on a controller for a motor which was
00:08:17
Speaker
turning the blast furnaces in steel plants in India, in Vokaro steel plant actually.
Transition to Finance and Wall Street Experience
00:08:23
Speaker
So fascinating stuff, I never have seen actually a mortar tilt a furnace full of molten iron. It's really awesome to see it if you have not seen it.
00:08:33
Speaker
so that is what I was doing but I also felt like the design part of it which is what I thought was you know my passion there or my interest there was not really getting satisfied because these things are already well designed I was doing the last bit of fine-tuning and you know more like you know last bit documentation wouldn't say documentation it was more like service or fine-tuning right so someone designs a drive but then you need to make it work for that motor in that application in that environment
00:09:03
Speaker
which is more like adapting it to that, it doesn't feel challenging enough to me at that point. So, and then, you know, everyone has this group of friends that he or he hangs out with when they're in college. And for me, everyone in my, it just so happened that everyone in my close group actually was, ended up doing something in finance at that point. They were either doing, you know, CAD and going for like an MBA somewhere or people, they were getting placed in investment banks directly.
00:09:33
Speaker
So and I was a complete beginner in that area. I had no idea of what is finance.
00:09:39
Speaker
In the sense, I just knew that there is something called balance sheet, but even that I didn't really know what has to be done there and all that stuff. So I was very intrigued actually by this whole area. And this two years of doing this kind of a role also kind of made me feel like, hey, is this what engineering is? I mean, it's not as fascinating as it sounds. And so I actually desired I should really go and take a look at finance because literally everyone around me was doing something in finance at that time.
00:10:10
Speaker
So that's when I quit that job at ABB and then went for a master's program in financial engineering. I don't know if you've heard of that course, financial engineering. It's actually a branch of engineering, which takes a lot of sophisticated models from physics and applies it to stock markets.
00:10:33
Speaker
OK, so you talk about things that probably quantum mechanics folks would talk about. But you apply to stock markets. And it's amazing because both of these are unpredictable. You might have heard of quantum stuff being unpredictable, right? So they try to apply the same thing to stock markets. Which is called quant trading. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The outcome of that is quant trading. Yes, yes, that's right. Quant is the quantitative part of that trading. Yes, yes.
00:11:01
Speaker
So that is a course I got an admin in and this was 2008. So I was in New York and I mean, I had not gone outside the country before that. How did you afford this? I mean, you're from a middle income family, you know, like going studying in New York sounds expensive.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was a one year course and I pretty much asked around all the letters I could without being too ashamed of it. And I also, you know, was able to make some loans, take some loans. So, yeah, some hybrid between all this, I was able to work, you know. Also, the the problems was very clear. You're going to New York in a finance course. I mean, seriously, you can repay any loan within six months. And that was the picture I was getting.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, okay, this is small investments are a long term return.
00:11:59
Speaker
I went but it was 2008 and as I told you before I didn't know anything about finance and I didn't know that there was one of the biggest crises in the entire history of finance brewing at that point. Little did I know that was what is lurking behind. So I went in 2008 June to New York and I realized that every week that passed by there was one less
00:12:25
Speaker
company to apply to for a job so all of the things that I had so and I don't know if you know this but but but when in movies when you see New York there is a bias to show the Midtown part of New York the Wall Street part of New York there is a lot of New York that is outside of this and I actually because I went to Columbia University actually
Life and Work in New York
00:12:51
Speaker
I got an advert in Columbia so I went there
00:12:53
Speaker
And that was basically the borderline of where things start to change in terms of appearances. Like that is not the New York that people show you in films. So that's when I realized, okay, reality is actually slightly gray. And also the professional part of it was quite bad because they were, because already people were getting fired and things are really bad. Only people with some finance background were getting jobs.
00:13:20
Speaker
because no company wanted to invest in a person to train them from him or her from scratch. But then one good thing that was happening is because so many people are losing money left right center, I mean, from a company standpoint, a lot of risk management firms were hiring. And financial engineering was the in thing at that time. It was actually one of the things that caused the crisis. If you have seen movies like
00:13:48
Speaker
I said I forgot the name now, but the... The Marjan Kaul. Yeah, Marjan Kaul is a good example. There's also this other movie which is a little more funny, right? The Marjan Kaul is a very serious movie. Anyway, so there was still this belief in using financial engineers to hedge risk. So that is where I came in. So bankruptcy firms were hiring, risk management firms were hiring. I got into risk management.
00:14:16
Speaker
of a company called AXA. You might have seen Bharati AXA here in India, right? So that's what I got in. I was called in to take care of the portfolio risk that comes in from, you know, so insurance premiums come in and people actually invested somewhere and that's how they return, you know, whatever schemes you have gotten into with the insurance company.
00:14:40
Speaker
So that money has to be managed and they were losing a lot of money in that management at that time because the stock market was really bad and I had to come in to be part of a team that was hedging that risk out. So that is where my finance career started.
00:14:56
Speaker
So AXA is an insurance company, like any insurance company in India? Like say ICICI Prudential or it's like that only? Yeah, it is like that only, but they offer very complex financial products. So there are products which are focused on retirement benefits. Meaning say for example, for the next 20 years of your life, if you pay say $1000 every month, then after you retire, you're guaranteed $10,000 every month.
00:15:25
Speaker
every month, something like that, right? Like they do that investment for you. So those kind of, I think we have similar products here with an Indian. Yeah. Like this is called a pension plan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's about pension plans and coming up with the annuities for that and so on. Yes. So that's what I was, that's what I started off in finance. So, okay. So, you know, I'm going to dig a little deeper here. So this like, uh, XR collects money from,
00:15:54
Speaker
people who are currently earning and putting away for old age. And it invested money in the stock market. And that is how it gives them back much more money when they retire. And your job was to protect the value of that investment. Precisely. That's actually, they don't do it only in stock market. They do it in a bunch of vehicles. Stock market is one of them. They also do it in bonds. They do it in more
00:16:19
Speaker
Like they also put some money in hedge funds and so on. So they diversified their portfolio. So yeah. And I came in to make sure that they don't. Like how would you protect it? Tell me the tools that are available.
00:16:34
Speaker
OK, so I thought we'd be talking more about aerospace. But anyway, I did this for six years. So definitely I can talk about that. Like I told you, I'm going to let my curiosity guide me. So this is fun. Yeah, so the way we do it is so people usually have a portfolio allocation.
00:16:55
Speaker
you know framework right and they use models to say where money should be. But then there are certain well-identified risks that come and say for example, with whatever portfolio you are in you can always come up with what people call
00:17:07
Speaker
greeks if you're aware of that term basically means that you have 100 rupees and you put 40 rupees in stocks and 60 rupees in bonds and then tomorrow the Nifty or whatever sensex moves up and down by one person you're going to lose this much percentage of your 100 rupees so that is the sensitivity of the 100 rupees to that market change
00:17:32
Speaker
So, that's called a Greek basically. Greek as in I think it's coming from the mathematical concept of a derivative. Basically, for a small change in your sensex, what is your portfolio going to take as a hit? So, I come in and say, hey, this is what the Greek for this portfolio is and by the way, there are some
00:17:52
Speaker
interesting financial products available, wherein if we buy that, then it sort of acts like heads, wherein if I'm supposed to lose 1%, I won't lose that 1%, I'll only lose 0.01 because I bought this extra instrument. And those instruments would be like short selling related stuff? Those would be like call options or put options basically.
00:18:17
Speaker
So particularly if you want to protect your portfolio's worth from going down when there is a stock market down, you'll probably buy a put option on that. What is a call option and a put option? I studied all this stuff.
00:18:33
Speaker
like 20 years back in my MBA, I've completely forgotten it. Okay, so a call option is basically like, you know, you're basically entering into a contract with someone who says, and you're betting with them saying that, hey, if the market goes up beyond this certain money, I will still be able to buy the stock from you at a lower price. So basically, it's betting on things going bad, getting better.
00:19:00
Speaker
And a put option is actually the reverse. You're basically buying at a higher price. Exactly. Even though the market goes lower. So basically what we do to hedge out stock market risk is you find out how sensitive you are to the market from the portfolio and you end up buying a portfolio of options.
Risk Management and Financial Engineering
00:19:18
Speaker
Say I'll buy a little bit of calls. I'll buy some puts and then make sure that if my market moves, my stocks will lose money, but when options will gain in their worth and so I'm net net.
00:19:30
Speaker
That was basically what I was doing. Okay. So this is exactly what financial engineering is? It was one aspect of financial engineering. One aspect of it. Okay. Okay. So, and I imagine like small stuff that you would do would lead to big revenue impact. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of writing. I got really lucky in that sense because the team I was working in was managing billions of dollars of derivatives.
00:20:00
Speaker
are all these options. The more the finance zagon for that is derivatives. And I was literally sitting there day in and day out. It was like a trading floor. So every day, there'll be all these staggering numbers of, oh my god, we gained this much. Oh my god, we didn't lose this much in all these things. So it was very, very hands-on in terms of impacting the bottom line of the company.
00:20:29
Speaker
that team particularly. So yes, so that that gave me a lot of satisfaction the initial period at AXA, because I knew that what I was developing models for or what decisions we were making would terribly save the company money. And that was a very, you know, very satisfying feeling for some time. Was it very much like a boiler room kind of a, like, you know,
00:20:55
Speaker
people with three or four monitors in front of them. Yeah, I had four monitors. But it was not like the trading floor you would see in the movie kind of thing because it's not like so many people out there. It was not like a say Morgan Stanley trading floor or Goldman Sachs trading floor. Because it's not like we had hundreds of people doing this. We had like 10 people or 20 people doing it and that area used to look like that.
00:21:19
Speaker
and we were so market driven like we live and die by what the market does right basically until 6 p.m. New York time basically 6 p.m. New York time is where nothing happens and then there is this half an hour before Tokyo wakes up and starts market starts so the six to six thirty is when you really get your
00:21:40
Speaker
you know, your free
Competitive Finance Environment
00:21:42
Speaker
time. After that, again, you have to watch out for Japan exposure. And after Japan, it comes India, then comes Europe, then again back to the US. So that's, it used to be around the clock. And Friday evenings were great because Friday evenings, six o'clock was amazing. That is the time when literally no market in the world was open. Till Sunday night time period. So I've been, for a very long time, my weekends always ended at Sunday night period. Because Japan opens by then. And New York times Sunday night PMMC.
00:22:10
Speaker
Got it. So you must have been working with the top 1% of the smartest people in the world kind of a thing there. Oh yeah, that was that. Again, I consider myself lucky today that I met some amazing people, both in my course at Columbia University.
00:22:34
Speaker
And after that at AXA as well, I still actually, you know, use some of the things that I learned from them. But that's easy to say now at that time, it was soul crushing because I just, because I mean, I, I was okay academically all along my school years in college and all that, right? I mean, I was not like a topper topper, but within let's say the top five, top six, always like academics was never like a problem for me.
00:23:01
Speaker
so I was always sort of this okay performer and so I had this image about you know okay I'm fine okay and then you go meet these people and they're like oh my god okay I have to basically self have to basically rewrite my image of who I am that's a little scary because actually it also I think happened at the right time because it is at a time where
00:23:30
Speaker
you're at least mean around just those early twenties way that is when my personality was also I think my opinion of myself was getting formed properly and it got rooted in the right kind of reality because I met some really awesome people and I realized oh my god okay I need to find what is there in me that I'm different from them in these some other skills that they're really really good at so yes but it must have been like you know the way a diamond gets polished you know that kind of a high
00:24:00
Speaker
high performance environment with very very competitive peers. Yeah, I mean see actually it is right. I don't know if it was a dive-in part at all, but people are very nice. Again, I'm lucky there, right? I obviously, you know, it just happened that people around me were not nasty. They were not like, you know, there was no corporate bullshit and none of that stuff, but
00:24:25
Speaker
It's just the kind of value that they were bringing on with the kind of amount of hours of work they were putting in. And what I was doing was like, not comparable in some sense. I'm like starting to get this code to work for like six hours and then they just finished it in like two hours and actually it runs faster than my code.
00:24:43
Speaker
what am I doing? So, that kind of feeling. So, it was, it was pressure, it was not pressure to... Why were you writing code? Was it to run simulation? What was the code for?
00:24:57
Speaker
code was for multiple things, one is to run simulations or if the market does a certain thing what the portfolio would do. It was also for like building trading tools. So we had to figure out ways where we had to, all these rules of thumb, right? I basically, one thing if I learn from finance is the amazing thing about rules of thumb.
00:25:16
Speaker
Right, like this finance is full of shortcuts and all these really interesting shortcuts wherein it don't tell you exactly what will happen but it really give you a good idea of what's going on, what to predict. What are they, give me some examples of rules of thumb. No, rules of thumb as in like say for example even this whole Greek thing I told you about right, what will happen to your portfolio if there is a change in the market and if one person market change happens.
00:25:41
Speaker
That's the first approximation of the value erosion or value creation. Similarly, there are all these metrics. I remember I used to work for the head of trading there and the questions used to always come like, okay, tomorrow if the, so in New York it was S&P 500, that is their market index. So tomorrow the S&P 500 moves by 5% and the Nikkei, the Japan one, Nikkei moves down by 2%, what will happen to the portfolio?
00:26:07
Speaker
and you had to come up with, so if you are not really thinking of how to answer these questions, your Sunday is ruined. So we used to come up with all sorts of shortcuts too. What is the quickest and, you know, it could be dirty and it could be like dirty in the sense like very simplistic, but what is the quickest way to estimate something? All these questions like, okay, tomorrow market crashes by 20%, what will happen to the portfolio? So essentially it honed your ability to take decisions with
00:26:37
Speaker
a lot of data which you may not necessarily be able to register all of it, but you were able to absorb the data and take decisions. Yeah, it made me think of, it made me come up with systems wherein even though there is a ton of information to process, always the answer has to be in 10 seconds.
00:27:00
Speaker
Wow, that's an amazing skill to have. If you've heard of people generally traders not having patience, it's very true. So they don't and they just move on. If you get asked a question and you don't answer in 10 seconds, they move on and it will make me feel very bad because it just felt like
00:27:23
Speaker
God, why am I not able to answer the question? Right. So what I ended up doing is like, particularly on Fridays and before going home and all these lean times, right, I used to just come up with all these small, small rules of come for myself. So and all these numbers, there are like hundreds of numbers each Excel sheet is like, you know, one, one megabyte, one MB, two MB, but doesn't matter. What matters is, can you answer that question in five seconds?
00:27:49
Speaker
So that actually made me abstract away a lot of useless information. It taught me how to do that, and I actually still find that very useful. Very interestingly, because probably of my finance years, today for rocket building, which is what we do, we have a lot of rules after.
Return to Aerospace and Inspiration from Elon Musk
00:28:08
Speaker
And I have been telling the team to work on that. So anyway, that's it for a different part of the chat. Like moving on from Excel,
00:28:18
Speaker
Did you like make the switch for more money when you joined AIG or was it for a different portfolio or what was the thing? Oh, no, I think so. I was working in AXA. I was doing this. I loved it. I learned a lot, but I was an engineer at heart. I think my dream for space never really went away. So I decided that I should just go
00:28:43
Speaker
quit all this and go to aerospace because that is really what will give me fulfillment. But at the same time, I was also actually already starting to doubt what am I doing because I already changed once from electrical to finance. Now I'm going back from finance to some engineering. Is this just me just being impatient with things or is it really something that is my calling? I had no idea. Was it a Elon Musk effect?
00:29:11
Speaker
to even think that you can leave a job in finance and do something in space. I mean, you know, I say two decades back, it would have been like unbelievable to hear somebody thinking like that. But, you know, people like Elon Musk have made it possible to think like that.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely that part as well. I mean, that was the reason why I took up a job in LA. I wanted to be around SpaceX. But at the same time, I think what was also happening is I was simply getting really restless with my professional work.
00:29:48
Speaker
And I felt like I cannot continue on like this. I had to give it a shot. So that was there. Of course, that was the time when rocket launches started becoming a big deal in the US. And we had this biography of Musk come out. And then at the same time, we had Steve Jobs sort of getting biography came out at that time. So all these books also shaped my ability to take risk.
00:30:15
Speaker
But this restlessness was there constantly which is why I actually also because a lot of people started telling me around me that you know I might be confused.
00:30:24
Speaker
And the feedback I heard is, hey, you know what? Maybe just live with this for some time. You will get used to it. It's not that hard. I mean, a lot of people would be really long to be in the place where you are in today. You are in New York in finance. It doesn't get better than this. And I was in front of us as well. So meaning very close to where trading is or in the trading floor itself. So that is as good as it gets in finance, basically.
00:30:50
Speaker
That is where you pick after that is that is the part that is the team to be in to become the CFO or something like that That is where people raise up the ranks in that rates. So that was there So I actually that's when I ended up doing a lot of other things because I really wanted to understand who I am as a person Okay, that's when you got into making films
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. That's where my three years of part-time filmmaking school happened. And I really just want to understand, like, what am I good at? Because as you also rightly asked, how was it working with really talented people, right? It basically makes you question what you think about yourself. But then you do realize there's something in you that will work.
00:31:31
Speaker
You just have to find that. It might not be what you thought it is. It's something else. And for all that, just experimenting generally helps. So that's why I always love films. I don't know when that interest exactly started, but I think I've always been very curious about how films get made. Basically, the concept of storytelling always resonated. So that's why that also came in.
00:31:57
Speaker
So yeah, film school was there. And then film school actually helped me make it very clear that I was not cut out for finance. So a lot of those revelations happened.
Pursuing Aerospace Engineering and Networking in LA
00:32:07
Speaker
Then I basically quit my job and registered for a master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UIUC. And yeah, that happened. But that was in the middle of nowhere as far as aerospace engineering is concerned.
00:32:25
Speaker
it was in some part of Illinois nothing really was happening around that and US particularly if you know like this is so geography focused right if you want to be in electronics or software you're probably better off in the area exactly right and similarly if you are in finance if you want to be in finance you're either in Chicago or in New York
00:32:48
Speaker
And similarly in Illinois, nothing was there for aerospace directly. And that is where the feeling came, okay, I need to be around space. And that is what drove me to LA. And I was on a visa, I needed a job, I can't just be, I have to either be a full-time student or I have to be a full-time job, otherwise I can't be in the US.
00:33:09
Speaker
So that's where the AIG came in because AIG gave a very similar role to what I did at AXA was also open at AIG and it happened to be in an LA location. And so you did both like you joined AIG and you also pursued the I converted this to my part-time yeah I converted this to a part-time course like a evening course basically and it was done online and once in a while I had to visit the university and stuff but it was more like occasional stuff so
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah. And working finance from Los Angeles is really interesting because your day starts at 6 and it ends at 3.30. Yeah. Okay. So it gave you the time to study like after your day was. Yeah. So usually people go to bed early, but I didn't do that. So I was able to meet a lot of people and network and understand what is this sector that I'm so fascinated about? How is the reality of that sector?
00:34:07
Speaker
And being in LA definitely helped because meeting so many people were first of all so encouraged by SpaceX and I happened to meet a few people from SpaceX which actually was like big wow moments for me. Oh okay, these are the people who were there kind of a feeling, right? So all that happened and yeah, slowly got used to what this whole sector is about.
00:34:34
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders, then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple podcasts and subscribe to the show. So when did you then decide to quit AIG and do space full time?
00:35:04
Speaker
That was very clear from the time I quit my New York job itself actually. In the sense, it had to be spaced full time. I just didn't know how to get there. And between two things happened. One, I knew always that I wanted to come back to India at some point. I also was going to get married around that time, around 2017. So that is also what was happening. So you met someone in the US or this was in India?
00:35:33
Speaker
I came for, I mean, I met a person remotely online, but then I actually met her. Like your parents? No, no, no, it was not because it was not a arranged kind of matters. It was more like through some common networks and stuff, a random LinkedIn thing, I think. LinkedIn, wow. Not very often you get to hear about people, like, you know, getting married through a LinkedIn connection.
00:36:00
Speaker
No, it was like some common community of some Ivy League folks or something like that. So from there it started.
Returning to India and Focusing on Space Projects
00:36:11
Speaker
And she was working in India. She had been to the US and then she had returned. So you had that value system match there in the sense that you also wanted to come back to India after working in the US.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yes. So that's how that started. So I was also looking to come to India for, you know, because of this, right, this was also moving. And also the other thing is being an Indian citizen doing aerospace stuff in foreign country, not necessarily US, any country is a little hard because it could be construed as technology, which is dual use and
00:36:51
Speaker
There are a lot of clearances that you need to go through and it is doable, right? It's definitely doable. The question is it takes the focus away from technology and puts it on paperwork. And then you're running around solving these paperwork issues as opposed to closing out technology. So that is why I decided India is probably a better place.
00:37:11
Speaker
And one thing that totally caught me by surprise is the respect that ISRO has in the US. At least no one had told me about it. But when I used to go meet people and tell them that, hey, I'm from India. And if I mentioned something about ISRO, immediately people, it was almost like they took me seriously just because of ISRO. And I had nothing to do with ISRO that day. So I realized that actually India is doing really well.
00:37:41
Speaker
Okay, but was it like a, you know, for example, people from IIT are highly respected. But if you look at, say, the number of research papers and patents that IIT file, they are like much lower than comparable organizations around the world. So was it something similar where somebody who's worked in ISRO then come to the US and therefore has built respect for the ISRO brand? Or was it like
00:38:10
Speaker
Israel was doing groundbreaking stuff which people were taking notice of. Yeah, it was more of the latter. Israel was really doing groundbreaking stuff that no one had done at that time. And I think people are actually, not only, it continues that, you know, how is Israel able to pull it off at these kind of capital cost expenditures, right? I mean, we are one of the most affordable space programs in the entire world.
00:38:37
Speaker
So, that is fascinating right and I think it is important to keep money in mind because it is not available easily even at a government level and you are talking hundreds of millions of dollars being reduced to you know say double digit million dollars right. So, order of magnitude changes and doing successful missions.
00:38:59
Speaker
So the Mars missions, the way in which we did, I think in 2016 actually was the time when there was that 104 satellite launch of ISRO that happened and at that time we were the only country in the world that had
00:39:17
Speaker
launched the highest number of satellites in one launch so all that was already happening right and so and and some of the technology that we have uh accomplished and particularly in rockets for you know commercial satellite i think is on par with what anyone else has done so uh so so there was so much respect for that part then that's when i realized actually it's not like a bad thing it's actually probably a good thing to go to india and do it
00:39:46
Speaker
because the rest of the world is actually very curious about how India is able to pull this off. So I saw that respect in there. And rocket launches particularly are very, very, it's like a rocket launch is a little bit like music composed by an artist, right? Like anyone can, even if you're not a musician, you get to judge it. I can go and coolly talk about, yeah Raman, I'm saying, yeah, that was not really cool.
00:40:15
Speaker
even though I can't compose anything even one note of it, right? And so I found that very fascinating about because in other products you don't get to get to, you don't get to do that, right? Like if say for example, you're writing a software product for some company and you have a big bug, right? So probably a boss is going to be pissed off and probably a customer, you're going to lose that customer, probably some 25 people in that network will know.
00:40:40
Speaker
That's about it. Rocket launch fails. Tomorrow your neighbor will ask you, what happened? The whole world knows, right? Sir, it is very public. You're putting your work out there and doing that instead of having gained so much credibility. So that is where I think the credibility factor comes. Being able to put technology out there for the entire world to judge.
00:41:02
Speaker
and still getting things right. So that's what basically told me that India is not a bad option. In fact, I soon realized it is actually the best option. Did you build a corpus, save up a corpus to bootstrap it? Or did you first start by looking for funding? How did you identify what you want to do?
Building Small Rockets for Satellite Launches
00:41:31
Speaker
such a broad domain. So within that, how did you identify what you want to do? Tell me about that journey, from a vague itch to something which actually existed. Oh, yeah. So there, actually, the rockets part was very clear. I think I grew up watching Dutarshan launches of PSLV. So that fascination was always there. Then, of course,
00:41:57
Speaker
going to the U.S. and seeing, you know, SpaceX, certain reusable rockets that was also there. And then when I did my own networking that I told you about when I was in L.A., everyone I met in, in fact, from a university, I think I went to about 25, 30 universities in the Southern California area.
00:42:18
Speaker
starting from small community colleges all the way to like really good ones in terms of their ranking I went to everything and all of them I think had some small satellites sitting in a lab and I really wondered why are there not in space satellite is not supposed to be in a lab right so and I used to ask the same question actually to people and everyone was complaining
00:42:41
Speaker
about like, you know, they were not getting the right kind of vehicle to go to space and it was not easy to combine with the rest of the people who wanted to go. The orbit they wanted to go to is not where the rocket was going. All sorts of logistic problems. So that's why I came up with this small part that, okay, actually she built a really, really small rocket that really quickly takes small satellites and quickly puts it in space. Like all this quickly, this feeling of quickly was there in my head from that time because people are suffering from more delay.
00:43:12
Speaker
It should just be a small rocket to quickly launch things in space and quickly come back and that's it. And a reusable rocket? Reusable or not was actually, I was not very focused on that part of it. But it was more like, okay, if you want to go to space, just you should be able to go to space. It's not like, it should not be like so complex on a logistic side. Because it's not like technology was not there. We're already been launching rockets from 60s. Right. But then still people are stuck with satellites and in so many labs.
00:43:41
Speaker
So that is where in a way you were like looking at the uberization like on demand sending to space. Yeah, yeah, it was very much on demand sending to space. I really felt like if someone like for example, you know, wanted to put something in space for his or her son's birthday or something, it should not be like, oh my god, you need to be an, you know, you need to be a Jeff Bezos for that.
00:44:05
Speaker
it should not be that hard right as long as yeah it will be expensive yes but it should not be like only the top 10 top 1% of the richest people in the world should be able to do that so that's where it started and yeah i mean after that i cold called a bunch of by this time actually my other co-founder his name is moyen he he was also sort of in the middle of a career change and stuff he was actually he did his bachelor's in aerospace and then
00:44:33
Speaker
He's really fascinated by space law. He's like this, he really tries to examine why exactly, you know, things are right, what is right, what is wrong, all those kinds of existential questions, right? Because it's very hard if you think of it, actually. How did we come up with the system to say, you are right and I'm wrong, right? And you can endlessly debate that. But we still have a system that meaningfully functions, if not perfect, still meaningfully functions. So he was interested about the space aspect of it.
00:45:01
Speaker
So, stuff like who does space belong to? Now, if you end up building a city on Mars, now is that city, you know, some American companies or is it America's or whose is it, right? And all of those things. So, he was there and he was also running some sort of a contract manufacturing company in Chennai.
00:45:20
Speaker
because his parents, his dad was not well, and he had to run that because of a family situation. He had stabilized that, and he was also looking to do something in aerospace, which is when I told him about my own plunge into aerospace.
Research and Founding Agnikul
00:45:34
Speaker
And so it seemed like a natural way for him to also get coming, and that's how he joined the journey. And we both actually, yeah. What's the timeline here? You joined AIG in 16.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, 2016 and I told Moen around middle of like somewhere around later part of 2016. Okay, okay. So those two years you spent at EIG, you were also in parallel setting the ground to launch Agnico.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. I was doing a lot of work to understand what it means. I was beginner to startups, no one in my family had done any entrepreneurship as such. And, yeah, space was new. Everything was new. So I had to do a lot of groundwork to understand what it means to do this. Right. So yeah, that is what. Tell me about that two year journey that like, like, so you
00:46:35
Speaker
First you found a person who could be a potential co-founder, then what next?
00:46:39
Speaker
Oh no, that came much later because Moin was doing, told me that during the later part of 2016 or early 2017 actually, even though we were talking, right, that was not the first thing. First thing for me was to, so this is where my finance experience came in. I knew what it means to go and talk to someone about a business. I tried to always ask this question, hey, if I had to go and pitch this to Elon Musk, what would he say?
00:47:06
Speaker
Like simply a question I used to ask myself because I wanted to see how an expert would look at it. So I tried to come up with the business case, I tried to understand what truly does it mean to build a small rocket, dig the market survey for other small rockets out there, understood if there is really a business you can make out of it. All the questions that later on investors started grilling me on. That is what I was forming the framework for.
00:47:36
Speaker
And at the same time, all the startup jargon, which at least now is seeming very normal to me, but at that time it was completely like, okay, what does it mean to say seed or what is pre-series? What is series? How do you raise money? What's value? All those things from a core finance standpoint, it was easy to understand, but I didn't know the jargon in the industry here. So that kind of work was what was happening for a long time.
00:48:00
Speaker
And then once Moin came in and also it was around, I think it was, these things lined up. I was actually, so my fiance then, my wife now, she had come to visit me, I think in 2016, December, during the Christmas time there, right? And at that time, I was just asking, I mean, I was just talking to her about some random thing. And then she suddenly told me about one person on Twitter in Chennai, about doing something on aerospace.
00:48:31
Speaker
And then I reached out to him, and he actually connected me to someone who is a part of the IID Madras community. And then he connected me to someone who is a part of a particular facility with an IID Madras. And that person connected me to Professor Satyaj Satravarti, who now is a co-founder of Unikook. So that's literally how it started, because I was doing a lot of cold calling with Moin. Because I was very clear that this will have to be a university affiliation has to be there, because I didn't have that kind of money.
00:49:02
Speaker
to, you know, it was not a PayPal to SpaceX story, right? My Wall Street tears are not that luxurious. Okay. So it's not like I had that kind of money. So I knew I need an academic partner for labs or infrastructure for guidance, for access to people to work with. Those things are very dear from the very beginning. And it was also like, I was just seeing those success stories in the US when I was doing my own networking.
00:49:28
Speaker
So that's why things started. And then I cold called so many problems. I mean, mine and I, I think we wrote to about 70, 80, IIT professors across the country.
00:49:38
Speaker
Pankur, Karakur, Delhi, Bombay, any meaningful IIT, at least in terms of an aerospace engineering team, as we wrote. But rightfully so from their perspective, this was just a bunch of people who had no idea what to do and they were reaching out trying to see whether they could build rockets. So they would have most likely flagged as a spam, which I might have done today if I were in their shoes, right? Who knows?
00:50:01
Speaker
but so again not complaining just saying that's how it happened but then one person for some reason this person right who who i met through these four levels of four degrees of separation he actually happened to give me a meeting a video meeting then i pitched what was not agnical at that time but some version of agnical at that time and he actually was like yeah this is not a bad idea i myself have thought about building rockets in a few interesting ways maybe we should continue talking
00:50:29
Speaker
And that day I decided, okay, I should start looking for one way tickets to Chennai. So that's how the story started, basically of coming back. See, the lucky thing is that it happened in Chennai. Who knows? I didn't care about Chennai at that point.
00:50:45
Speaker
From L.A., Bombay and Chennai are close enough. So I was just like something you should do in India, you should figure it out, maybe Bangalore, who knows. But this happened again, I think, as I've already told you so many times, so many things fell in place along whatever I've done so far. I think this is another thing. Meeting Braf. Yeah, once he showed the slightest amount of interest,
00:51:08
Speaker
It was very clear that I should pack and that's in December. Actually I came to Chennai for God in October 2017 and by December 2017 we formally incorporated it. And he was like part of the founding team or he joined a little later.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah, he was part of the founding team very much. Very, very much part of the founding team. He was a person who told us what can be done, what cannot be done. I mean, he's a rocket scientist himself. And it's like he could at least tell us how the system functions here. And he sits on a lot of ISRO committee reviews and all that stuff himself. So he had a lot of connections there. More importantly, he also actually
00:51:57
Speaker
new people who he connected us to. In fact, he is a person who connected us with Mr. R.V. Perumal, who was actually the father of India's GSLB rocket. He was the first person he pitched to. It was my first
00:52:11
Speaker
a pitching meeting with a scientist and I was super nervous and probably now I still have the presentation of course and it looks very stupid to me now but anyway 4 year old story What was the pitch that you were making? No for Agnigul only but what the rocket should be like and all that
00:52:30
Speaker
because I had my own notions of what does it mean to build an on-demand rocket.
Support and Growth of Agnikul
00:52:37
Speaker
Obviously at that time it was very crude but two or three things I luckily got right was first the core business case. That has never changed. A lot of things have changed since 2017 but the core business case never changed.
00:52:50
Speaker
So that I'm very thankful for, that I got that right earlier. Second, I think the kind of people I met starting from Moin also to Prof and then through Prof, Mr. Perumal, I think all these people, I mean, I could not have asked for a better group of people to start the company with.
00:53:09
Speaker
So that fell in place. Product is product. Product keeps evolving all the time. So that's this. But these things somehow fell in place. And yeah, that's how we started. So Agnikul was incorporated in Chennai. I think the date was December 1st, 2017. That is the date. And like initially you did not need funding because of the IIT Madras intuition. Like they were giving you labs and people who would work with you and
00:53:38
Speaker
infrastructure and stuff like that yeah yeah something like that yes but uh so so three things helped us in very very very uh at the beginning very few months right one is both mine and i had worked before so there were some savings that we could put it uh right and then second yes you exactly said uh
00:54:01
Speaker
being in an academic institution helps. Starting from cheaper food all the way to the right kind of access to people. In all these small things that count for me it was a very humbling experience because I like I told you right we were managing portfolios worth millions and all billions all these big big 10 power 9 kind of numbers but then again I was here like okay actually today I can go and have food here because it was really also unsettling because we didn't know what's going to happen
00:54:28
Speaker
Right. So, but being in always makes me feel good to be in a university setting. So always feels like there is so much hope and so much more to do from a university setting. So I loved the part that, you know, I was able to get into and meet someone from ID Madras and ID Madras was supporting.
00:54:47
Speaker
So yes, so it was not that bad. Third thing also was that Prof himself had students that he was working with who he could, you know, tell, hey, why don't you just go and talk to Srinath for some time, kind of a thing, where I got some free help as well. So all that was helping us, you know, slowly get started. That's how we went about it to the initial phase. So who was your first external investor, like our first major external investor?
00:55:15
Speaker
So first major external investor was Vishesh. He's from a fund called Special. And what happened is I ended up, so I was very new to the startup community here. And in the 10 years that I was not in India, all my finance who were with me, who were in startups, they are all like become founders and everyone knew a lot of people. So I met a lot of funds at that time through them.
00:55:43
Speaker
So because by then people who stayed in India, this was like when I was 31, 32. So by then actually you can imagine right people are already in a certain place in their career by that time. So met a lot of people but space take as a business was too foreign as an idea for most VCs in the country at that time.
00:56:06
Speaker
And most of them used to think, I mean, again, I won't blame any of them, right? Because it's the context, it's just a guy who's coming from the US here and he wants to build rockets, like, what are you talking about? But then there was this one fun by name special in Chennai, actually, out of, because all of it pitching used to be in Bangalore, 95% of the time.
00:56:29
Speaker
I met someone in Chennai through a tight Chennai event at IIT Madras, Intubation Cell. And he seemed to understand this stuff. And I was very surprised by that fact that because I didn't know that they actually had a view on space tech. That was very early at that time. This was 2018, June, I'm talking about. So then that's about it. Then once that started, so once Vishayesh and his team were interested in us,
00:56:58
Speaker
Slowly, we got used to what it means to work with the VC. Vicious is definitely one of the most founder friendly VCs that I've met. So I made it easy, but he was the first person to put serious money in the company. So they invested half a million. Okay. And like, you know, what did you use this money for? Tell me about that product evolution.
00:57:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah, so first, this is again very clear to us because we had people like Mr. Perumal, Professor Satya, all these people were like, you know, very clearly telling us what has to be done, right? The framework for the development was very clear. It was more on the execution and the innovation part. So yeah, the first thing was about building out engines. Basically, the way you build any vehicle for space, it could be a spacecraft, it could be a satellite, it could be a rocket. You basically get the engine right.
00:57:50
Speaker
And because you can't play with the engine too much, you do a lot of things and finally you get an engine and you're stuck with it. And then the rest of the rocket is built around the engine. That's how it goes. This is the standard in the industry as well. So that's where we started. We had to first get the engine right.
00:58:06
Speaker
And so, yeah, we got the engine part done when multiple tests happened. And then after that, I think by 2018, September, we were able to do a successful firing. And this was a conventionally manufactured rocket engine, meaning it was not in no 3D printing, nothing of that thought was happening then.
00:58:27
Speaker
After that, we were able to... What does it mean, successful firing? Did you actually build the whole rocket and then fire it? What does that mean? We built the engine and then we put it on a mount. We basically harnessed it to the ground and then we just fired it as if it would be flying. But it is not flying.
00:58:50
Speaker
so because actually for a rocket to fly you need two things you need an engine and you need autopilot basically those three two things have to be working together to get the to keep the vehicle stable and fly so this part was still in the engine stage so we just had to put it on the ground and fly
00:59:10
Speaker
This you said middle of 2018 is when you had this successful firing of the engine. First successful firing of the conventionally manufactured one. But we always knew that we had to 3D print our rocket engines and this was because it was very clear that one of the slowest moving pieces in making a rocket is a rocket engine itself.
00:59:30
Speaker
And we had to be, you know, we wanted to automate it to a point where there is no human intervention involved at all. It should be like something just makes the engine give it to you. And this is what we are reading about other companies trying 3D printing for rocket engines and so on. We just, you know, we're pushing the boundaries ever so, you know, steadily. So, okay, we made 20% of the engine 3D printed. We made 40% 3D printed. And then now it is 100% 3D printed.
01:00:01
Speaker
and also you successfully test fire that. So, yeah, team has done extremely awesome, you know, development there, but that's basically it. So, this fundraise of half a million dollars was also around the same time only, middle of 2018. It was, yeah, around the end of 2018. End of 2019, okay. So, what was 2019 like for you? Like, what were your milestones in that? Like, 18, you had these two milestones of the fundraise and the...
01:00:30
Speaker
successful test firing. Tell me about 19. 19 was about scaling the team with this money that came in. Also trying out this fully 3D printed engine, right? And also starting customer conversations.
Rocket Launch Preparations and Processes
01:00:46
Speaker
You know, we have to grow out of the lab basically, right? That part of it where you start looking at business aspects, you start talking to customers, you start talking to suppliers, you start talking to ISRO. All of those things started happening in 2019.
01:00:59
Speaker
Did you build the rocket around the engine? Yeah, that was obviously. That product is continuing to evolve. But I'm saying other than that, other than the vehicle development, a lot of other things also have to be done. So those things started by that time. How do you launch a rocket? Do you need a launch vehicle for that? Or can you just put it on the ground somewhere and launch it? How does the launch happen?
01:01:28
Speaker
What are the things you need to do to actually get it off the ground? Oh, OK. So actually, rocket and launch vehicles are synonymous terms, at least the way I've used it here. Launch vehicle is what you refer to. The right way to refer to a flying rocket is a launch vehicle, basically. So it is launched from a launch pedestal, basically. That's the phrase for the system that you are talking about, launch pedestal.
01:01:54
Speaker
So, what do you need to do? So, it's like a car that is, you know, ready to go in a F1 race or something, right? So, basically, you get everything assembled ready. You need to fuel it. You need to keep all of the programs that are needed for it to fly in the right manner. And then you fire the engines and let go. That's basically the idea.
01:02:19
Speaker
And the interesting part is every rocket that has ever flown to space has always been on autopilot. In fact, my understanding autopilot as a theory itself developed from the need for launching rockets to space. Because things are happening so fast, you can sit back and do any joystick control. So next time, if you actually end up watching a launch and you'll see a lot of these people in front of all these monitors, all of them are just watching.
01:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yes, that's true. So nothing can be done. You can basically just like wonder what's going on. Celebrate what's going on. But the concept is that
01:03:00
Speaker
you let go and you wait and watch the fun and not only you, the rest of the world gets to judge it with you. So in that sense alone, I still feel there is a small analogy to a film that can be made. Every rocket launches like a film. So a lot of money spent and then you put it out there, everyone can get to judge it and you can't really do much about it. Right, right. Okay.
01:03:25
Speaker
So in 19, did you actually launch a rocket also to space? No, no, we have not launched anything to space so far. Hopefully by early next year, we'll be ready for that. So far, we've been fine-tuning, fine-tuning. There's a lot of fine-tuning that goes in because you have very little margins when you're building a rocket from a mass standpoint. Otherwise, it doesn't get you all the way to orbit.
01:03:52
Speaker
Okay, so you need to make it as light as possible, so you're constantly looking at how to make it lighter. Yes, yes, it's exactly right. So you're constantly doing that, you're fine tuning, fine tuning, fine tuning and usually it's not a first-cut optimization that gets the job done. You need to think of like some side things that will all have to work together to get that reduction to be possible.
01:04:15
Speaker
I can give you some example right there is an example of where you push out fuel and to push out fuel into your rocket engine you need something called a pressure and which actually pushes the fuel from the tank into the engine right. Now you obviously have to take that also with you.
01:04:31
Speaker
But then to take that with you, you end up storing it in a liquid phase, basically because liquid occupies lesser volume, you can get by with small amounts. The very reason that the pressure can be used and can be stored as a liquid is because the fuel is so cold, it is cryogenic oxygen and that is why you are able to hold the pressure. Now, if the moment you lose the, if the fuel starts to heat up, you also lose your pressure. So, these kind of like interconnected optimizations are there.
01:05:01
Speaker
So that is why the fine tuning takes a lot of time, but it's a very challenging experience to go through this. Basically, there are a lot of moving parts and everything needs to work like a symphony in a way. Yes, yes, yes, right. And the question or the challenge I always tell my team is, we all know that all human beings have some imperfection in them, but we all have to come together and build a perfect product.
01:05:29
Speaker
which I find is a fascinating challenge. So because the passing grade is 100% as they say, there is no scope for failure, no room for error. You can't reset your rocket in mid-flight. It's not like a phone if it hangs. It's not like you can just reset it. So you basically get one shot and it has to work and literally thousands of things have to work.
01:05:53
Speaker
And I find that as a very, from a pure soldier, like, you know, human behavior standpoint, I find it a very fascinating challenge. How do a bunch of people who are all, you know, in some sense imperfect, right, come together and make a perfect product? That's very, that's the, that's the, that's the job of making rockets, basically. That's a fascinating way to look at it.
01:06:18
Speaker
So do you have like commitment from customers and do you have like a I mean you know are the pieces falling in place you would need some sort of a launch platform facility are those available off the shelf and you would obviously have needed more money also I'm sure that half a million dollar wouldn't have lasted too long so you know tell me about how these pieces are all falling into place.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So it's all going quite well, luckily. Again, so one thing that happened during 2020, so we spoke about 2019 some time ago. 2020, the good thing that happened is we were able to raise the next round of money. That was a pre-series, that was about $3.5 million. And also the other thing is right after that COVID hit, right? And at that time is when the government came out with this new Atman Arbar policy.
01:07:12
Speaker
And there space got a free lift because they came up with this new entity called InSpace, which is going to be a parallel to ISRO just for authorization of private space programs. So, all of the things that you are talking about in terms of a place to launch from and in terms of authorization to launch, I think again being in the right place at the right time has helped us. So, we are able to do that now.
01:07:37
Speaker
So in space is something like TRI, like you have TRI for private telecom companies, like it takes care of the regulation and disputes and allocating the wavelength spectrum and all of that. So is it something like that? Yeah, loosely like that. It's an authorization body. Yeah. So loosely like that. Yes. Correct. Correct.
01:08:02
Speaker
So yeah so that happened and at the same time we had some successful engine firings as I told you we raised a couple of rounds of money so customers also started taking us more seriously right and people also the team also started to grow so things are slowly falling in place it's hardware hardware doesn't work so that's the norm so there is always you know you're constantly tinkering
01:08:24
Speaker
right tinkering is the norm and you're constantly also fine tuning in the process but slowly the other pieces of the puzzle are falling in place definitely you know i would say that now i can see clear visibility on all areas from a customer standpoint from a launch mechanism standpoint from an authorization standpoint from a product standpoint all these areas are very clear deliverables very clear goals
01:08:50
Speaker
Because as a startup, I think that's one thing to actually formulate. You need clarity on the question. The answers will anyway come. You should know what questions to ask and those things should be in place first. Because otherwise it becomes so pointed and you don't know what you're trying to do and all this stuff. So luckily we have gotten over those points so far.
01:09:15
Speaker
Like you said something very interesting, and I want to kind of understand that a bit more, that it's important to know what are the questions to ask rather than the answers, because the answers come. So what do you think are the questions that an entrepreneur should know? Can you talk a bit more about this? Oh, yeah, sure. So I think the first thing is, what is the value addition rate? What is the real thing that you are bringing
01:09:45
Speaker
to the world. Because you might think it's a problem, but it's probably not a large enough problem, or it's not a problem at all. So are you actually solving a problem, or are you just doing something because you're like, I think that's the first question. And it's a very hard question because you need to be able to brutally face yourself and ask that question. Because there are always biases that we get into, yeah, yeah, this will anyway happen. Yeah, yeah, there is a problem. Those things are always great.
01:10:13
Speaker
but to honestly get a third person's view and it's very tough also because a lot of skeptics around even if it's a genuine problem people don't sometimes acknowledge it not because they don't want to but because it's just it is not easy sometimes right so you will have to figure that part out first what is the true problem that you're solving and what is the solution whether your solution is actually going to help people
01:10:38
Speaker
help people enough to give you money. That's a different level of reassurance that you need for the business. The next thing is I think to create all the structures and put systems in place to keep things going. First 10 people can do anything actually. It doesn't matter. You don't need any system because you can literally talk to everyone every day.
01:11:01
Speaker
But the moment you go to 25, you need systems. The moment you go to 60, 70, you need really strong systems. Otherwise, you won't even know where inefficiencies are coming from. So that is the right set of questions that I'm talking about. Also, questions about
01:11:17
Speaker
What are each of these people going to use to communicate effectively with each other? So if you have like five teams, how are these teams going to talk? What is the language? I obviously don't mean English alone. I mean the manner in which communication information flows within the company. So these are things to solve for and ask us questions first.
01:11:40
Speaker
And once you ask these questions, I think there are so many smart people around you and in the team that you will hire who can all solve it. I always find the biggest value addition that I bring to Agnico also is in the questions I ask, not from answers, because there are much more smarter engineers than I am. It's like a little bit like my New York experience. I'm talking to a lot of people who are 10x smarter than me, right in the design part. But I think the value addition I bring in is by setting
01:12:08
Speaker
by giving them direction and asking the right questions. Got it. Interesting. So what are some of the systems that you are using? Like, you know, what is your headcount now? I assume it must have crossed 60. Yeah, we are at 18. So what kind of systems do you have in place for them to work well together, for them to communicate? How does information flow?
01:12:33
Speaker
Are you using off-the-shelf stuff or have you got something custom built? What is your technology stack? It's a combination of both. It's not only about using existing tools or something. It's actually a manner of doing work. Putting systems in place for people to... I told you about that contradiction. How do a bunch of imperfect people come together to build a perfect product? The answer is you don't let people fail.
01:13:02
Speaker
That's the answer. And the way we do that is by having enough checkpoints in between so that people, even if they, by mistake, do an error or something, you find a spare to hold them. So I always tell this to the team as well that, you know, like, I remember that you or your colleague or both of you together can make mistakes.
01:13:24
Speaker
But put in place something wherein if you make a mistake, he'll catch you or if he makes a mistake, he will catch it. So that could mean like introducing verifications where necessary. That could mean like, you know, like having a third person reviewer. That could mean like always having a sanity check. Does this make sense? When you're neck deep in a design, you should take that five minutes out once a week to just come out. Hey, what am I doing here?
01:13:49
Speaker
right that kind of things those are the systems I'm talking about so we have a lot of that going we also try to have a lot of focus on product as opposed to function because yeah you could talk engines you could talk tanks but in the end the rocket is a rocket it's it's a combination of all technologies so we should always think you know what are we doing that will deliver something to the vehicle as opposed to okay I have done this simulation right or I've done this
01:14:17
Speaker
this formula right and that is only one part of the story. So that alone just that ability to think beyond those boundaries functional boundaries actually helps people. Okay and do you use like some workflow tools or project management tools or what do you use for communication or these are like nothing special.
01:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, nothing special. It's a usual productivity tools that anyone else is using. It's about these systems that we have within the company in terms of how people should use it. It's not about the tool, it's about how people use the tool. I remember there was this phase in Admikul where everyone was hooked on to this app called Asana to manage tasks. Have you heard of Asana before? Yeah, I have. Project management. Yeah, exactly. And it's amazing how after 10 days, no one wants to try that.
01:15:09
Speaker
So then is when I realized that it's not about the tool, it's about how you use the tool. And there are so many tools out there. And there are some really cool tools as well. But the point is, what are we putting in place because of the tool? So that, I think, creating innovative ways to get people to do that is where I think I add the most value. I think that my co-founder Moini also adds the most value.
01:15:37
Speaker
It's like I think a CEO role or probably any co-founder role is a big HR role is there. You're constantly talking about how to improve communication within the team. Okay. And tell me about your customers now. So there is like a customer base falling in place.
01:15:58
Speaker
Are these like companies from India? Are they global companies? It's both. It's very international. And there are also local players, local in the sense of the country players. So yeah, I think space is actually very global in nature. So very rare to find customers only within one country or something like that. But wouldn't there be a logistics cost of
01:16:24
Speaker
shipping the satellite to India like if someone has built a satellite in the US or it is immaterial like it is a small fraction of the. It is a fraction of the actual launch cost yeah. And also there are certain geographic locations that are better off for launching to certain orbits. So, it is almost like yeah it is going to be
01:16:49
Speaker
a bit of an initial cost to come to India to launch, but then from India you get access to orbits that you can't get access to from some other places in the world. So that alone makes India just a good point. And then after that, it's about how good your product is and what you're clearly trying to offer. Okay. And what kind of companies are these? Like, is it like companies offering broadband internet or like what? Yeah, so you go to space only for two reasons, largely. One is you go there and take pictures of Earth.
01:17:19
Speaker
Or I joke about it on the team as we are all in some level enabling selfies from space. That's too difficult. Right? The ultimate selfie. The ultimate selfie, yeah. With that in your background, you're going to go and take a picture of something. But I mean, of course, there are a lot of applications to taking pictures. People track logistics with that today. People track.
01:17:47
Speaker
you know how weather patterns are changing, people track how land usage is changing, projects are evolving, all that stuff. And the other big industry is communication which is an example of what you said is the internet part.
01:18:00
Speaker
There is no internet of things and there are separate satellite systems for that. Communication, 4G, 5G, whatever, all of the cell phone, eventual usage goes there. So, all of those things come together in customs. Okay. Okay. Okay. And like, who are the investors who backed you now after special, like the subsequent fundraisers that happened? Oh, so we had Pi Ventures lead the next round.
01:18:30
Speaker
And after that, we had other people like Artha and Globewester also come in. Then in this recent round. These are all Indian. Yeah. Yes. And then recently we raised the $11 million round and there we did with a round was led by Mayfield India.
01:18:50
Speaker
and then the first of other angels who also participate in this. Did it get easier in subsequent rounds or did it get harder?
01:19:01
Speaker
I mean, every round is unique and that's one thing I've learned just because I've raised funds three times now doesn't mean I will be easy the fourth time. So fundraising is hard. Actually, one of my friends used to tell me this very early on when I started. He's actually running a successful startup here. He used to say good people and fundraising are always hard, no matter the scale of the startup.
01:19:22
Speaker
So that is true but of course you get to know how people think, you get to know how to tell a story, you get to know what exactly people are looking for. I mean at the end of it fundraising is about convincing someone that they can put money. How did the conversations change from round to round?
01:19:41
Speaker
Questions to you change from one round to the next? So there were very different focus points, right? Like in the first round, or first like seed round, it was about idea and core product and founders themselves, like me and wine and graph and all that. Second round was more about the ability to scale, the ability to do proof of concept hardware, the ability to talk to customers.
01:20:05
Speaker
All that. And now this last round was more about commercialization. What next after this? What after first launch? It was very different focus areas. So in this last round, they would have asked you about the unit economics per launch. How much will you earn? Yeah. Exactly. Those kind of questions. Yes. Yes. Yes. It becomes much more about profitability part and all that also. OK. So are you at liberty to talk about how does a space company make money?
01:20:34
Speaker
What is it that you charge to a customer and what do you earn from one rocket? How many launches in a year will you be doing? And you know, the more economics part of the business or the finance part has probably not
01:20:49
Speaker
give direct answers there, going to talk around, beat around the bush a little bit there intentionally. But I'll say that, yeah, at least, I mean, we are, so we are in the business of reducing time to go to space, right? You don't, waiting time. So it's a bit like instead of taking a bus that will only go at certain times, we are giving you a cab to go to space, right? So that is what we're building. So we give you that advantage at the same cost that you will take, that a bus will take you.
01:21:16
Speaker
So we are on par or slightly cheaper than the industry standard today. But what is the industry standard like for one set? Is it like a per kilo payload? Yeah, it's a per kg payload. It's a very, it's like an Amazon truck, actually, like, this is the business of getting things from point A to point B. It's a transportation business. Launch vehicle company like Agnico, we are building the truck and also driving the truck. That's basically the idea, right?
01:21:40
Speaker
So, yeah, you usually charge on a per kg basis, how much of a you take to space, depending upon where you start and where you stop. What is the benchmark per kg? It's around $30,000 per kg roughly today for these small satellites. And how many kgs does your satellite, would your satellite be carrying? Like what is the plan? Vehicle has a capacity to scale between 30 to 300.
01:22:05
Speaker
You can take as little as 30 and be profitable. You can go as high as 300 and still the vehicle capacity. How is that possible? Like 32, 300 is a fairly large range. Yeah, that's actually one of our USBs actually. So we build our rockets like how typically laptops with RAM slots are built, right? So if you want higher processing power, you add a couple of RAM slots, right? RAM to your computer, right?
01:22:34
Speaker
Very similarly, we built it in such a manner that the vehicle can be scaled up and down. So you can add one section, or you can add another engine and increase the capacity, or OK. That's amazing. OK. And how many rockets will you build? Is it now clear on whether it's a reusable rocket, or tell me about that actual
01:23:01
Speaker
part of when you launch the rocket, what happens next? Oh, then it's about launching more frequently and really getting to on demand, getting them to launch within a two-week time frame and test. Now, tell me about your hypothetical launch. What are all the things that will get checked off before the launch? Once it launches, what will happen? If you can paint a picture of that one launch happening.
01:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, so a customer indicates that he or she wants to put say 10 kgs in space, so they contact us and then we configure a rocket for them based on where they are launching from, where they want to go to and how much they pay. Will you be clubbing customers or it's like? We could, it depends on the customers, it depends on the orbit, it depends on the target.
01:23:52
Speaker
For this example, I'll just take its one customer. We get their satellite, so we agree on that, we agree on the mission, we agree on the trajectory, we agree on other metrics that matter for the satellite.
Satellite Integration and Launch Execution
01:24:03
Speaker
Then we integrate there, and then we ask them to basically ship the satellite. Then it gets integrated with the rocket. Then the rocket itself is taken on a mobile launch pad. And the rocket is custom built for that launch? Yeah, yeah, yes. Based on the payload, you will custom build it. Yeah.
01:24:22
Speaker
Exactly based on the payload and the target orbit they want to get And yeah, so we take them in along we take the vehicle along with the satellite in you know to the launch pad say let's say Sriharikota How far is that and where will the rocket be made and where will it go for the launch? It'll be made in Chennai It will be launched from Sriharikota How far is that? 60 to 70 kilometers I think roughly
01:24:50
Speaker
So the whole rocket goes on top of a truck or like how does that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. It goes on top of a trailer of a large trailer.
01:24:59
Speaker
Okay, okay. That must be quite a sight on the road. Yeah, right. You're also waiting for that moment. So you go there, then you go to the launch pad, then you get set up. Basically, you're a bunch of other trailers that go along with the rocket trailer, wherein you have pumping stations, fueling stations, then, you know, the ground systems for checkout and all those things.
01:25:22
Speaker
then you take it to the launchpad, you erect it, you make it vertical basically and then you fill the fuel and then and everything is right, you start the countdown. Countdown is basically a series of checks that happen at a very well-defined set of time intervals. So at every every time you basically as you're counting down different different things are being given an okay by the flight computer on the ground fast computer.
01:25:50
Speaker
OK, like fuel and electronics working, the communication working. Yeah, yeah, every single system. There are literally hundreds of systems. But everything has to be flawless, right? So that check happens. And then finally, at the time that you're planned, you basically switch on your engines. And once you develop thrust, you let go and then watch. OK.
01:26:16
Speaker
So there is a onboard computer which does the navigation. Yeah, the entire navigation is done by an onboard computer. You can't do anything from the ground even if you want to. It's going too fast. And how powerful is that computer? Is it like equivalent to let's say a Snapdragon 8 series or like? No, it's very simple actually. It's probably like
01:26:41
Speaker
It's probably like what was there in the 90s or the spagers and the early cellular phones, right? That kind of processor is more than enough. See, because you're actually not doing very complicated stuff because in the end, whatever computation you do, mechanical hardware doesn't react as fast as electronics hardware. You have an engine that has to be doing the job for you.
01:27:08
Speaker
Whatever you do, that is finally going to be in milliseconds, not in nanoseconds or microseconds. So it's actually, you can take your time with it. But you're going very fast, so you can't interfere and you can't bring in humans into the process. But because still it's millisecond level decisions. But millisecond level decisions are like a science play for today's process. We are talking micro nanoseconds today. So milliseconds is like literally 100x slower.
01:27:37
Speaker
Okay, and once it is out of the atmosphere, then what like it goes to a specific location in the orbit, does it completely exit the atmosphere? Yeah, it goes up to a certain height. So, the atmosphere that as we know it becomes very thin by 40-50 kilometers. After that, it is basically thinner and thinner atmosphere. Technically, yes, there is atmosphere, but that is more like theoretical atmosphere.
01:28:07
Speaker
So, till what height does it go? Yeah, as I said 40 to 50 ish kilometers, you can say there is some meaningful atmosphere. After that, it is very, very rarefied and beyond 100 or so practically does not exist. So, your rocket will go till what height? Oh, rocket goes to 700, up to 700, depends on the customer, but it goes up to 700. And then once it reaches the desired height, then what?
01:28:34
Speaker
Once it reaches the desired height, it injects the satellite out. So basically, going to orbit means going to a certain height and actually giving enough velocity to a satellite. So in that process, you end up going fast yourself. That's what a rocket does. You, along with your satellite, go very, very, very fast. And once you've attained the velocity for that height, you just basically pushed the satellite gently out. OK.
01:29:03
Speaker
And through the momentum, the satellite stays on that orbit only. Yeah, it just continues. There's nothing to stop it. Basically, space is very benign in that sense. Atmosphere is where all the action is. Once you go to space, there's nothing there. Satellite folks usually take care of radiation protection and thermal protection and all that.
01:29:22
Speaker
Once you take care of those couple of things, it simply just stays there. There is nothing. You will basically work till the point where simply the life runs out of your confidence because there is nothing else that can kill you. That's how you hear about these Voyager probes that are well beyond Pluto now, right? Launched in 1960s, right? They'll just keep going. There's nothing. So atmosphere is where all the action is. Is there like a risk of getting hit by debris?
01:29:48
Speaker
And not in a launch, launch is for like 10 minutes to 10 minutes, right? So debris is not a real problem. We do have deorbiting protocols in place so that we don't let anything stay in space for a while. So our rockets, I'm saying, the satellite's deorbiting will happen from a satellite customer standpoint. For a rocket standpoint, we will go put ourselves there and we basically just slow down ourselves a little bit. And that means slowly over a period of time, we'll come decay back into our orbit, we'll come back to our
01:30:19
Speaker
And when it comes back, does it like land the way we see those videos of SpaceX like landing back? Oh, no, no, no, this is like more like burning off an atmosphere itself completely. Okay, so it's a one time use rocket basically. It's an expendable rocket, both the first stage and the second stage of the rocket. Yes, expendable. What is the first stage and second stage? When do they kick in?
01:30:42
Speaker
This is usually different parts to a rocket. So what you do is you consume a lot of fuel and then you throw off some part of your rocket because it is carrying empty tanks. So that's what is called a stage. And so ours is a two stage rocket. And both these stages get burnt off and they're not. Yeah. Mostly fully burnt off. Yes. Second stage is definitely first stage to most. Okay.
01:31:09
Speaker
So, Srinath, tell me what is the journey of a rocket? Like, you know, from the time that the demand comes to you till the time that the whole project is closed?
01:31:23
Speaker
Sure. So basically, the journey is the journey of an Amazon delivery truck. I hope I didn't destroy that with too much simplicity there. But I mean, essentially, that's what happens, right? So a customer sends us a requirement, a mission.
01:31:41
Speaker
and we agree on it and then he ships the, he or she ships the satellite to our place and we integrated with the rocket. So that's a little, I mean essentially it's like plugging a USB into the rocket but you know it's always a little more complex than that you have to make sure everything works as a checkout. The rocket and the satellite are able to talk to each other.
01:32:02
Speaker
Once that is done, the vehicle is fully assembled. It could also be like a payload from two, three different customers that you combine. That could also be that. Yes, that's right. So in that case, then we wait for other people to come in as well. Or again, we are OK with dedicated launches. So it depends really on what is the minimum biomass. Like once they cross like 30, 40 kd's, we're good to go.
01:32:24
Speaker
Then we assemble the vehicle put it on our trailer and then so you have a 3d printing process, right? so so you would have like the 3d printing happening then and there or like
01:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it depends upon the exact requirement, right, but we probably will have inventory worth for at least one rocket. But on the side, yeah, you can obviously start printing the, you know, engines as well on the side, start making the tanks as well, all these things could happen, but expecting there is some inventory in there, right. So, the rocket is integrated with the nose cone part of it and then the tanks are integrated to that and then the engine.
01:33:02
Speaker
then the same thing happens to the, say, first stage, the bottom stage, where there's a long tanks. And I mean, you might be aware of this, but just to read it, a rocket is mostly just tanks, right? There's a little bit of engine stuff at the bottom. There is one small satellite on top. Otherwise, it's a lot of just empty tanks. That's what any rocket is. Anytime you see a rocket, remember that you're seeing a bunch of tanks. OK. In the bottom, you have engines. In the top, you have the satellite. That's it.
01:33:30
Speaker
So we integrate that based on what some combination of what's in the inventory, what will be live 3D printing and stuff. Then rocket is put together. And then this whole journey, like, you know, like a road trip starts, basically, not just the rocket and the rocket and then all its supporting systems go another 40 feet.
01:33:53
Speaker
It's all about 40 feet container based approaches to taking the rocket from 0.8 to the launch pad, wherever that is. So we go there.
01:34:02
Speaker
And then, so that will be like, say, the filling station, the pumping station, the water pooling station, the, you know, some of the stations for monitoring the performance of the rocket, you know, the one that you see on TV, right, where the bunch of people sitting on a monitor and looking at what's going on. All of these things, along with the data acquisition systems for that, we move all of that along with this. So it'll be like this fleet of 40 feet containers going to the launch pad.
01:34:32
Speaker
On the launchpad, you again start assembling these together. You basically erect the vehicle. The vehicle was horizontal so far. You basically make it vertical. Then you give a lot of connections. You connect the plumbing, the electrical ones. There's a lot of things that the rocket, it's basically like you're charging the vehicle for its batteries. You're filling the tank. It's getting ready for the journey, right? So plumbing is for the cooling. What is the plumbing for?
01:34:59
Speaker
The plumbing is for filling the tanks basically and then also for the jet plumes that come out for cooling them. Yes. So all this while a bunch of people who are sitting on the other side in the patient control room and just checking if every single sensor is working and they have a bunch of them that runs well into the high triple digit. And then there are valves and the computer stuff. So every electronic board goes through an elaborate testing mechanism.
01:35:29
Speaker
where after there we went to the launch pad because you want to make sure that you didn't miss out on anything in the in the journey to the launch pad. So that happens. So once all that is done basically then we say okay we'll officially start the countdown. Okay and how many days does it take to reach countdown like you know from when you dispatch it to the road till
01:35:54
Speaker
So usually it's about two to three days of work on the launchpad. So I'm discounting the journey to the launchpad because that's just simply very slowly driving the vehicle. That's a little boring. But once you get to the launchpad, it's about getting through to the check there. So that's what we basically do. Once that part is over, the next step here is to make sure that we are officially ready to start the countdown. Once we start the countdown,
01:36:23
Speaker
Basically, what is a countdown? A countdown is a very disciplined and organized manner of checking everything in the rocket. That's all a countdown is. So you basically have a very elaborate checklist.
01:36:37
Speaker
And you do it with the time involved with. So just so that people are all coming together. It's literally a management process, basically. And you just keep checking every second this happens, that happens. So many things have to be done. And there is a time angle to it as well, because usually your launch point or your launch window, as they call it, the time of launch is fixed. Because at that point in time, you've already notified people in the sea, you've notified
01:37:07
Speaker
Airmen flying around that there's going to be a rocket. So that part is fixed. So you're going to go back and try to figure out all these things, right? Just to make sure that you time it all right so that when that moment comes, you're ready to go. That's what a countdown is. In the meantime, two of the things that have happened, you'd have alerted the rain safety people of the launch pad when they let you inside their premises. So they'll be making sure that the vehicle is able to talk to them. And just to be very clear, when it talks to them, we can't interfere.
01:37:37
Speaker
They have full authority to kill the vehicle if they want to, because if it's doing something wrong, we can't have it be an hazard. So that they have the ability to stop the mission at any point, both before and after liftoff.
01:37:51
Speaker
Right. So that happens. And then after that, we continue working on this, you know, checking, checking, checking. This is this core vehicle team is only doing checking all the time. That's all 20, 40 hours of this checking. On the other side, people are all getting busy trying to get all the other clearances ready, making sure that all of the notices are in place. Seamen and airmen have been notified
Countdown and Launch Sequence
01:38:13
Speaker
and all that. And then what happens is somewhere around four to five hours before we start the fuel filling process.
01:38:21
Speaker
Fuel filling process is actually, first it is done for all of the kerosene stuff. So we have kerosene liquid oxygen engines, the kerosene stuff that part starts and all of that filling happens, batteries are charged. Vehicle is basically, you know, you move all the parts that are moving and you see whether things move. It's literally like warming up, right? There's a warm up exercise that happens. And after that, you start putting in the fuel that is a little more complex to handle, which is liquid oxygen.
01:38:49
Speaker
So the liquid oxygen loading starts and that's a slow process because you have to cool the tank, the engine and then only you have to load it and all that happens. But you're basically getting to the last phase of launch. So by now the vehicle is fully getting ready. Once the oxygen is in place fully, that is basically it. I mean after this you don't have time actually because if you leave it, oxygen will again start evaporating.
01:39:15
Speaker
So that's about the last bit. In fact, I think we try to do it all the way to about 10 minutes or so before launch, 20-15 minutes. But yeah, what is it? You can decide that based on the mission, based on the requirements and local geography and all that stuff. This happens and then once that process is over, all the manual checks get completed and then we basically transfer control to the flight computer. So far you were controlling everything from the ground computer. You were turning on vials, turning off vials, everything was being done by a human.
01:39:45
Speaker
But at some point, this usually happens about 60 seconds to 120 seconds before liftoff. You give control to the flight computer. And the reason is you don't want to do that at the last minute, because anyway, finally, the flight computer only has to do the job. And doing that to last minute will give you very little time to react in case things are going wrong.
01:40:05
Speaker
You keep control to the flight computer and in the meantime you immediately check if everything is still okay because now you have basically given control to someone else. It must be like very nervous two minutes like those last two minutes. Even we do our engine firing and I think you know we did one last week as well and every
01:40:25
Speaker
Every count on whether this is for a ground test or a launch or whatever it is, is always nervous because there is that time ticking and at the same time a lot of things have to go right. And you have one shot at it basically, right? So it's all of that moment. So this happens, yeah. And so you do the last, you keep, now you can't do any checks. There are flight computers doing checks and simply reporting the data to you. And you're just hoping that everything is okay.
01:40:52
Speaker
and and then it usually the thing that gets announced on mic and all that is the last 10 seconds right it up to lift up so at around t minus three or four seconds your engines come to life basically you make sure that all of the engines are producing enough thrust and then and that happens for a certain like one or one and a half seconds usually and then after that point you let go
01:41:16
Speaker
and that's it, vehicle basically lifts off, it goes straight up for some time just to clear obstacles and then it does a little bit of a pitch over, pitch over in the sense it gently tilts in to the ocean, basically you want to go over the, you want to go into a, you know, a tangential direction, right, you can't, you basically, for being in orbit, you need to be parallel to the ground, not perpendicular, so you kind of pitch over,
01:41:42
Speaker
And that will also take you over the ocean where you feel a lot better because now you are over ocean, even if things go wrong, there's no problem for anyone. So that happens. And in between this, you would have had the first milestone. Basically, you have cleared your launch pad. So that itself is a big thing because no vehicle is perfectly stable. So the moment you let go, the vehicle will try to tilt over in some direction.
01:42:05
Speaker
It's a little bit like trying to balance a pen on its tip. So the moment you let go, it will try to fall, but then you're continuously correcting for it and clearing. So once you clear launch pad, then you do the pitch over, and then you keep going, and then the vehicle goes through, it really rapidly gains velocity. And there comes a point which is called the Max-Q point, which is the point where the vehicle faces the maximum load.
01:42:30
Speaker
And usually if you watch a launch and even for us, that is a big moment. Once you cross that moment, you basically know that the vehicle has been through the worst. So that's the point where usually there is a lot of applause in the mission control room because you know the vehicle has borne the brunt of most of the problems.
01:42:48
Speaker
right so then you continue on your journey after that it's it continues it keeps gaining velocity and altitude and at a point comes where your stage one is basically not very useful anymore it you've almost burnt all your fuel in it so at the right when the right woman comes you you kill your engines there you basically shut off your engines and then you you you you basically yeah the flight computer actually tells the stage to separate
01:43:14
Speaker
So the stage then falls off and the remaining part. So that stage would be like the lower, the bottom half of the rocket or something like that. Yes, yes. And then that falls off. And in the second stage, which is now there, it continues. It fires. And that typically falls into the ocean and that's like a one-time use. That's a one-time use rocket, yes. And what SpaceX has done, for example, is to catch that and bring it back, or try to bring it back directly. But basically, yeah, that's exactly what happens.
01:43:44
Speaker
Second stage continues for us is a two stage rocket. So second stage continues and it keeps going. Second stage is actually very easy in a way because you're outside atmosphere. And trust me, you're going on a journey of 600 kilometers, but the first 10 kilometers is where all the problems are because of atmosphere. It's unpredictable, there are winds and there is a lot happening on the rocket. Like for example, if we were to for some reason go and live on the moon, launching rockets would not at all be a big deal.
01:44:14
Speaker
There is no atmosphere. Most of the problems come when there is atmosphere. So you are outside there and then you have a lot more lever to go in whatever attitude you want, direction you want. You can face where you want. And eventually you slowly make your way towards making
01:44:31
Speaker
going towards the light point that you want to get into an orbit and when you're close enough there if you basically once you get into that moment right at that point you know that your satellite you've reached the point where your satellite wants to go to and then you inject your payload and it's just basically literally pushed out to the very gentle velocity it's almost like pushing a door like closing a door that kind of pushes all all that is given
01:44:59
Speaker
And after that, the satellite just continues on its way to orbit. And with that, the vehicle itself is done with its job. So it basically does something called passivation. It empties itself of all the fuel because it's going to be floating there for a bit before coming down. We don't want any accidents to happen in case there is a pollution or something. So you do something called passivation or basically making the vehicle inert.
01:45:25
Speaker
and you're there for some time and then after that. What is some time like a couple of days? It could be a couple of weeks maybe or a little more but you slowly decay down and it's a very positive feedback process like the more you go down the more you will be pulled faster down because you lose speed rapidly because of atmosphere but that takes some time it's like a spiral inward towards you.
Post-Launch Satellite Operations
01:45:51
Speaker
and yeah and then you fall back but you're able to predict where it will fall like that reasonably well reasonably well but more importantly for small rockets like ours it completely burns up on the way back there'll be nothing left it won't even actually have an impact
01:46:04
Speaker
There is very little left in the vehicle when it comes back. So fully blown up. That's it. In the meantime, the satellite that has been ejected will wake up. Till now it has been on sort of sleep mode. So and it wakes up once you get once it has been put out and then it slowly literally starts testing one system at a time. Hey, are you OK? And it starts communicating towards and then.
01:46:27
Speaker
literally starts with a hello world and slowly goes back to fully waking up state, and then starts doing its job based on what people below say. So a satellite sting is very, it need not be automated. Because you have a lot of time, worst case, hey, you know what, just wait for some time and it'll come back again over you. The argument is not like that. But yeah, that's basically the idea.
01:46:53
Speaker
Amazing this whole journey gives me goosebumps. It just sounds I mean, you know sounds like something out of what I would have read in science fiction when I was a kid Right. Yeah, it's still you do this a day in and day out and even for us. It's actually fascinating to think of it I every countdown makes me nervous makes me get that high, right? It's an adrenaline You know pumping event, you know any any day how many other times you do?
01:47:21
Speaker
So you had told me that you learned about rules of thumb. And what are the rules of thumb for a rocket company? Do you have some of those in your mind? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's all I talk about to the team. So yes, definitely. One thing, the first rule of thumb is how much of mass that you add to one stage will take you. How much payload will it cost you?
01:47:47
Speaker
Right. So in your first stage, for example, if you put in say, I'm just randomly picking numbers here because I don't want to talk about a rocket. Generally speaking, right. Say, for example, if you if you take out, if you add, say, 10 kgs to your first stage, right, one kg of your actual payload capacity is gone.
01:48:06
Speaker
So it's not perfect, but it's a very helpful metric. So if someone comes and is brainstorming, OK, I need to either add 10 kgs or I need to pay up another $100,000, then it's easy to make those decisions once you know this.
01:48:20
Speaker
So that's one rule of thumb. The other rule of thumb is mostly on the lines of, okay, in case your engine is down in efficiency or performance by 1%, what is the orbit you're going to, how much error will you have in your orbit?
01:48:37
Speaker
So 1% drop in engine performance is 10 kilometers of altitude. So that is another metric that we try to constantly check with. And then there are all sorts of sensitivities. What happens if 1kg of extra fuel is added? What happens if 1kg of extra fuel leaks? And we always talk about it in terms of payload capacity.
01:49:00
Speaker
So those kind of rules of thumb are useful. Then comes the question of, I mean, this probably I think is outside of a rocket company as well, right? But I mean, at least for us we use. So how long can you wait on a decision? I always use that. I try to parameterize opportunity cost in the company.
01:49:19
Speaker
So I say, OK, you waited for two days. Let's say this is the 50 people are working in the team. Each of those people, each of those persons are actually spending, say, about 20 percent of their time on it. So that's like about, say, 10 people roughly, right? 10 people working full time. What's their salary? And two days of not getting the job done. What's the opportunity cost for that? So I always say use that as a rule of thumb to make quick decisions, because sometimes the trade offs are really, really tight.
01:49:47
Speaker
And sometimes you get into the action of making a very elaborate trade-off as opposed to being decisive. I'm sure another company is doing this as well, but this is something that we use all the time. No, that's fascinating. That way to think about decision-making is fascinating. Oh, is it? OK. Because I actually got the inspiration forward from AXA when I was in New York. And I had this manager who actually once started timing the cost of every meeting.
01:50:17
Speaker
Okay, it was amazing stuff. So every time you go in and come out of the meeting, I mean, obviously I didn't know everyone's salaries, but then he had his assistant do it for us. And he'd be like, Hey, you know what, that meeting just cost us $10,000. We better get something done. I was like, what? It was just like 70% in dollars. It was $10,000 in dollars.
01:50:37
Speaker
So it just ingrained inside you that actually you know what, you should put a meter to your meetings so that you know what you're spending, it really actually directly measures the value of time.
Vision for Accessible Space Travel
01:50:49
Speaker
And to be very clear, that's only half the measurement, right? Because there is a lot of hidden things that happen when you don't do things.
01:50:54
Speaker
Like, for example, let's say I was supposed to do a launch today, but I'm only doing it tomorrow. And because of that, a customer, I lose credibility with a customer or something. How do we put a value on that? That's very hard. But outside of that, these things are very obvious to measure. So yeah, this is some rules of thumb and some tricks we use to be decisive and keep things focused. So what is like your
01:51:19
Speaker
You know, wildest dream about Agnical, like, you know, one is you would have, of course, like, you know, more short term ambitions. But, you know, so, for example, do you see like, say, SpaceX valuation is around 70, 80 billion. You know, do you see Agnical becoming a competitor to SpaceX and Blue Origin as as like your long term wild dream? Like, you know, what are those dreams like?
01:51:46
Speaker
So my long term wild dream with Agnicol is really actually not too much on the financial side. I mean, I do think if you do the right things, people will pay us for it and automatically money and valuation and all that will come. I really want to make it look like, you know, going to spare shouldn't be that big a deal for anyone or anything.
01:52:06
Speaker
And I think I told this multiple times to team as well. Getting to space should be like getting to a country that's quite far away from India, not more than that. From India, if you can go to the US, I mean, from India, you should be able to go to space. Interestingly, India to US, I think, is like some 12,000 miles. And we are talking 700 kilometers. Chennai to Hyderabad, I think, is more than that.
01:52:37
Speaker
So you just have to do it in the right direction. That's all it takes. So I feel like that part should be simplified. So I think in being a competitor or being as big as Blue Origin or SpaceX is definitely a nice ambition to have as a means to that goal.
01:52:56
Speaker
right? I feel like because they're doing different things and I think they have been an inspiration in some ways and they obviously we can compete with them as well it might come to that finally but the point is not that the point is to make sure that okay we should be like today I think if you tell me you're going from Chennai to Delhi I'd be like okay and just take on with some other things. It should be like that to go to lower authority.
01:53:21
Speaker
So, like satellites is just step one, like you would eventually also want to have human beings. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Transportation in all forms and manner for both things and people and everything. Definitely, definitely, yes. It's the most natural progression, right? Yeah. So, and would you look at like, you know, there are different approaches that different companies are taking, you know, like
01:53:46
Speaker
Virgin has its own approach and SpaceX has its own approach and Blue Origin has its own approach. So which of these approaches are you more bullish about that you think would be a better bet in terms of when you reach that large scale transportation kind of a scenario? Oh, I think I, you know, when both companies and in fact, everyone is now focused on it's becoming a privatized commodity, right? Transportation as such to space.
01:54:13
Speaker
So it is definitely about making costs affordable, making it like a meaningful transportation business. I mean, a lot of people today know how to run a transportation business for ground transportation. And the same rules apply to space transportation as well. So I think all those approaches definitely work. I think right now the biggest problem to solve for is both the cost it takes to go to space. I really think it should get ridiculously cheap.
01:54:41
Speaker
reduction in prices of the order of thousand times from where it is today. Only then I think it will become truly everyone's thing to do it. Otherwise, again, you're going to have it like being only approachable for a certain group of people, which will always keep it as an elite thing.
01:55:01
Speaker
As opposed to saying, hey, it's just 700 kilometers. I mean, everyone can go from Chennai to Ayatabad. So you should be able to go that much higher in space. So that's, I think the approach why is both companies, at least SpaceX and lower, both do things very differently, but everyone is trying to make it cheap. I think that part, everyone is unified on. But, but what, I mean, are you also looking at reusable in the future as a strategy or, you know, like
01:55:28
Speaker
in terms of what approaches they are taking, any preferences which you think or any judgment call on which is a good approach? Reusability, I think what SpaceX is doing is very much about actually being reusable in a planet where there is no atmosphere because they don't want to use air to come back. Blue Origin actually has never gone truly orbital before but for space transportation, I think what they are doing is definitely a cool thing.
01:55:58
Speaker
is going up and coming back down. So yeah, both those those are propulsive landings, right? So those are good. But I think generally my perspective on reality is on reusability is it really depends on what is the cost you're saving, right? If you think about why reuse, it's a question of cost. Now, the thing that not many people, at least outside the industry, they don't talk about is what is the cost of reusing something, right? You compare the cost of reusing to cost of throwing it away.
01:56:26
Speaker
Okay, what is the cost of reusing? Cost of reusing has two things in it. One is you always give up on payload capacity when you try to reuse a vehicle. Like for example, Falcon 9, the SpaceX vehicle actually burns its engines a little bit before coming down, right? Only then it's able to slow itself, right? And it has a variety of hardware on the rocket to make sure it is able to come back. Now the revenue that they have given up trying to reuse the rocket
01:56:56
Speaker
The revenue that goes into the payload that is lost in terms of capacity, the revenue that goes into or the money that goes into the other hardware, and then of course the money that goes into refurbishing. That should be actually less than the cost of the stage itself, otherwise it doesn't make sense. It's a simple mathematical relation at that point. So I feel for a very small rocket it becomes like a use and throw pen.
01:57:25
Speaker
It just doesn't make sense to say if I'm having 100 kg capacity, right? Let's say I end up spending 40 kgs to reuse my I end up, you know paying in terms of payload capacity 40 kgs to just get my vehicle back. I've lost half my revenue Wait, so why unless it makes sense that you know my half my the vehicle that I'm the part of the vehicle that I'm saving Is actually worth half my revenue. Why would I do that?
01:57:52
Speaker
Now, the equation tilts actually in favor of larger wakers doing that because for them, it will not be 100 to say 60 kgs, right? It could be like 10 tons to 6 tons. Now, that's a lot, 4 tons is a lot and because that you get paid in per kg, right, dollars per kg. So, that's a lot and that's why I think a Falcon 9 reusability makes sense. Like, any one reusability right now from whatever basic calculations we have, it still feels like it's too close.
01:58:22
Speaker
Yeah, you might save a little, of course you save a little, but is it worth it is the question. So when we go to larger rockets, yeah, definitely we'll also explore that. Okay, so my last question to you. You know, you envision a future in which space travel is just like going from Chennai to Hyderabad. How do you think that will
01:58:45
Speaker
change the way human society is. For example, way back in the 50s and 60s when computers had just come in, people probably did not see or some people might have seen how pervasively computers will change society. So what do you think space travel will do to humanity?
01:59:06
Speaker
Wonderful question. So I think two things will happen. First of all, being able to see Earth from a distance will increase our sense of humanity, sense of being together. I mean, that is it. Once you can see the entirety of the planet in one shot, the feeling that that is everything that you have ever experienced,
01:59:32
Speaker
will quickly sink in. So I feel actually it will bring everyone closer. All of the boundaries that exist, if you look at all of the manmade boundaries, I mean sovereign nations, borders, international borders, that space, I mean all of that would just melt away once you look at the planet from far enough.
01:59:50
Speaker
because you understand. There are no nation boundaries visible from space. Exactly. Only land versus water. That's about it. And that's how the planet has walls and has always been. So that will happen. So it's a very powerful feeling, I think. And also, I'm a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke.
02:00:07
Speaker
novels right as I told so and he always talks about how space is going to be the final factor that unifies humanity because if enough people are able to see earth for what it is right it'll really bring people together and I truly believe in that second thing I think is it'll make us appreciate how precious the planet is right you know once you go up you will realize that it's mostly empty except for this one one blue ball below which is where you have to be
02:00:37
Speaker
Right and that feeling is that we immediately tell you that oh my god, I better take care of my planet So we you will get that I think that change in perspective. I think a lot of astronauts actually experience that is what I have read It is like they can never see earth again the same way It just changes their perspective on how precious our planet is for all of us so that would happen and I also think the last thing that would happen is that
02:01:03
Speaker
you truly start understanding the context of, you know, where a species fits in, in the big picture, the big questions that, you know, the existential questions, right? Who am I? What do I do? I think it basically people all become slightly more philosophical. And I think that's a good thing for all of us.
Conclusion and Podcast Sponsorship
02:01:22
Speaker
Right. And I'm sure you're looking forward to piloting or being on the first Agnical human
02:01:45
Speaker
To follow the journey of AgniKul and keep a tab on India's first private sector rocket launch, do visit AgniKul.in
02:01:57
Speaker
If you like the Founder Thesis Podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit the Bodham.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N dot I-N for a complete list of all our shows.
02:02:17
Speaker
This episode of Founder Thesis Podcast is brought to you by Long Haul Ventures. Long Haul Ventures is the long-haul partner for founders and startups that are building for the long haul. More about them is at www.longhaulventures.com