Space industry likely to reach $1trillion by 2040: Pawan Kumar Goenka

With the participation of more private players, the global space industry is likely to reach $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2040, Pawan Kumar Goenka, chairman of IN-SPACe, told Moneycontrol on Thursday, June 30. 

IN-SPACe, or Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, is the arm of the Department of Space that allows and promotes the participation of the private sector in the highly specialised field.  

The global space economy stands at $450 billion and India constitutes less than 2 percent of it at $7 billion “and so we need the private sector to come in and exploit the potential of the space economy”, said Goenka. 

Discussing the launch of C53-PSLV, he said it certainly is a milestone and “a starting point for IN-SPACe itself to authorise their companies’ payloads into space”. However, there is a need for more private players for the economy to grow, he added.  

C53-PSLV is the Indian Space Research Organisation’s second successful commercial launch that saw the national space agency’s subsidiary NewSpace India place three Singapore satellites in orbit on Thursday.

Goenka added that he sees the manufacturing sector playing a big role and having immense potential in the Indian space industry, adding that the country could become the manufacturing hub of space equipment. “Although it does not have the ability to do that right now, I hope this [the launch] would pave the way to that.” 

However, Goenka said investment is a major challenge.

The total investment in India’s space sector so far is $100 million but “the total annual investment alone in the US is 20 times that of India”, he said. 

But with more space-tech companies demonstrating that Indian startups are capable of performing, investors are likely to pump in funds, he said. “At the end of the day investors who put in money need to believe in the company and the founder they’re investing in,” he said.