Meet the ex-Wall St trader, ops expert and IIT Madras professor behind Agnikul Cosmos

Agnikul Cosmos launches Agnibaan SorTED, the startup's technology demonstrator rocket that is powered by India's first semi cryogenic engine

On May 30, Chennai-based space tech startup Agnikul Cosmos scripted history after it became the first entity in India to successfully test a semi-cryogenic engine-enabled launch vehicle in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

Agnikul successfully tested  Agnibaan SorTED, a  technology demonstrator rocket, clearing its path to go for a full-scale orbital launch later this year, and then ultimately commencing commercial operations.

The launch vehicle market in the world is currently dominated by behemoths like Elon Musk-owned SpaceX. Indian launch vehicle service providers like Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul are trying for a piece of this multi-billion-dollar pie, by leveraging indigenous innovation and also the expertise and learnings from the frugal yet safe and efficient operations of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) .

ALSO READ: Agnikul's success motivates ISRO to support space tech startups, NGEs: S Somanath

The startup was founded in 2017 by CEO Srinath Ravichandran, a Wall Street trader-turned-aerospace engineer, Moin SPM an operations specialist and Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, a professor at IIT Madras. The startup was incubated at the IIT Madras Research Park, headed by Ashok Jhunjhunwala.

Srinath has over 10 years of experience in engineering, finance and project management. He has a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai and Masters degrees in Financial Engineering from Columbia University and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Earlier in an interview with Moneycontrol, Srinath had described Agnikul's launch vehicles as scalable rockets that can be customised to cater to the needs of someone who wants to put payloads which weigh as less as 30kg.

"... So that’s when we decided that beyond all of this manufacturing speed and designed feed and all that that we also do, we should have an inherent core architecture where the vehicle itself is scalable. We can increase or decrease the weight (of the rocket) based on what the customer, the satellite owner, wants. And now we are able to say that we can almost offer a dedicated launch.

Moin SPM is an operations specialist with over seven years of experience in engineering management, manufacturing, and supply chain operations. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics from Anna University, Chennai, and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Prior to Agnikul, he led a contract manufacturing company in the CPG sector.

Professor Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy of IIT Madras is a serial entrepreneur who is a co-founder in at least six IIT-Madras incubated deep tech startups: Agnikul Cosmos, ePlane, GalaxEye, Aerostrovilos Energy, TuTr Hyperloop and X2Fuels.

His journey with IIT Madras began in 1987 as a graduate student specialising in aerospace engineering. In 1991, he moved to the US to complete his PhD in the subject before returning to India in 1998. Since then, he has been a professor at the institute and took the plunge into entrepreneurship around 2016.

In a interview with Moneycontrol, Chakravarthy had talked about how he stepped into the world of entrpreneurship with Agnikul.

“When we started Agnikul (in 2016), I had not really thought about entrepreneurship at all. I did not know much about thinking through a business case: Why are we doing this? Who will care? Who will be your customer? These are difficult questions that you're required to answer as an entrepreneur to start with, right? Those are all things that I had no idea about because I was still this professor,” Chakravarthy said.

By then, Chakravarthy had been teaching rocket propulsion and space technology to bachelor’s and masters students at the institute for more than a decade. And through his experience in the field, he realised that experimenting with rockets was very difficult.

So when Srinath Ravichandran, CEO of Agnikul, presented him with the idea of 3D printing in rocket manufacturing, he was sold. “It was crazy. I just jumped at the opportunity,” he said.