Three Space Startups Picked for India's Technology Adoption Fund

India's space regulator, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), has selected three private startups as the first companies to receive support under its Technology Adoption Fund (TAF). Two of the chosen startups are based in Bengaluru and one in Hyderabad. IN-SPACe is the government body that promotes and approves private participation in the space sector, working alongside the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The Technology Adoption Fund is a scheme meant to help Indian companies absorb, adapt and commercialise advanced space technologies, bridging the gap between research and real-world use.

The three firms were chosen after a multi-stage review by an expert panel that included members from ISRO and other government science and industry departments. Each will get milestone-linked funding, meaning money is released in stages as the company hits agreed targets, along with technical guidance. The aim is to strengthen India's home-grown capabilities and make its private space industry more competitive globally.

The selected projects address different technology gaps. One Bengaluru startup will build a high-thrust, reusable liquid-fuel rocket engine (in the 800-kilonewton class) for medium-to-heavy launch vehicles, intended as a commercial propulsion option for next-generation rockets. The second Bengaluru firm will develop a large Earth-observation artificial-intelligence model, trained on satellite and aerial images, to produce insights for agriculture, infrastructure and disaster management at a national scale. The Hyderabad startup will make an indigenous AI-powered star tracker - a device that helps a satellite figure out its exact orientation in space by reading star positions - for small CubeSats and larger satellites, enabling sharp imaging and reliable communication.

This push reflects a wider shift in India's space policy, which has opened the sector to private companies in recent years. Earlier, space activity was largely the domain of ISRO; now the government wants private firms to build rockets, satellites and space services so India can capture a bigger share of the fast-growing global space economy. Funding early but promising technologies is a way to move ideas from the lab to the market.

For exam preparation, this story links IN-SPACe and ISRO, India's space-sector reforms, and applications like Earth observation and satellite technology, topics that appear in science and technology and current-affairs sections.