Why ISRO Making Into Business Media Is A milestone?

If India means business, the Indian space program should too. New Delhi's perception of its space program has undergone a change. It will hereafter grow with economic goals in sight. This is making ISRO, IN-SPACE, and NSIL attractive to business media.

In July 2022, I celebrated, of course, 10 years of writing op-eds, columns, and essays on strategic analyses of the Indian space program. I still remember my first-ever op-ed, published by Rediff, titled "India can no longer afford to live in a space time warp," published in October 2012. I was in my early twenties, a Ph.D. student at the time, eager to blog about my insights from working in high-tech space ecosystems in the US, Japan, and Europe. Although no one asked for my opinion at the time, I felt that an economy-driven narrative around the Indian space program was imperative. Of course, our communication satellites have been leasing transponders to communications and media companies for decades. However, it was then difficult to quantify how much India's space prowess contributes to the national gross domestic product. The reality is that even today, we do not know the quantum of contributions. Still, we now know that a term known as the space economy has emerged, originating from deliberations within the OECD and UNOOSA, and we must leverage it for the greater good of India.

That 2012 op-ed highlighted the necessity of focusing on space technology spin-offs, making 'lucrative' scientific discoveries (read 'innovation') from extra-terrestrial resources, and the wise (read 'prudent') utilisation of technological progress. After ten years, all this has been realised or put into the gargantuan Indian government's process - thanks to the formation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) and the New Space India Limited (NSIL). Where IN-SPACe caters to the growing demands of startups and micro, medium, and small enterprises, NSIL offers ISRO spin-offs to the Indian industry. These are new pursuits for ISRO and its governmental parent, the Department of Space. And immediately after these initiatives were taken, the renewed Indian space program is now the cynosure of business media in India.

When my Rediff article came out, I was driven by a zeal for contributing to the end of condescension. An ideological clique glued to the mainstream media carried tremendous disdain that India must first build toilets and then think of sending spacecraft to the Moon or Mars. This insult was as ill-mannered as the 'elite space club' cartoon in the New York Times. Despite the Godrej's, L&T's, and Tata's of the world being vendors to ISRO and doing well, none of these ISRO-industry associations could create narrative ripples that would be helpful for India. The mainstream media was not interested in helping the space program contribute more to the national economy and socio-economic indicators they pretended to care about. This chronic problem needed systemic governmental interventions.

Today, India has been able to create a small but adequate space ecosystem, a harmonious outcome of the Startup India, Digital India, Skill India, Udyami Bharat, and Make in India projects. In a recent move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 'Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance' (RAMP) scheme under Udyami Bharat in June 2022. The scheme has been allotted Rs. 6,000 crores, and it is tasked with helping MSMEs undertake capacity building, ramp up their exports, and measure their performance. These initiatives and projects are making a significant contribution to the Indian space program.

Since the time of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, who formulated the then doctrine for India's space program, the country has consistently expressed its intention to provide socio-economic benefits to the nation through space activities. Following the 2020 space reforms, India has finally taken the 'economic' aspect of the doctrine seriously. The Sarabhai doctrine is now being accomplished, thanks to the reforms stimulated by the Modi administration. Indeed, no country can afford to provide its people with social benefits without economic growth. Today, India aims to generate a massive economic value from its space program. And this goal has begun to manifest.

As the ecosystem becomes more active, startups, MSMEs, and large corporations will increasingly participate in space activities. Their activities are leaving a significant footprint in mainstream and social media, generating huge interest on platforms that seldom discuss the space program—the business media.

Equity, venture capital, annual reports, annual general meetings, mergers, acquisitions, public listing, joint ventures, partnerships, and subsidiaries will now become part of the narrative of India's space program. India's private sector is currently enrolled in a driving school under the tutelage of IN-SPACe and NSIL. The Modi administration, and therefore the Department of Space, expects that there'll be a day when technologies innovated in India's space industry will surpass what is generated by ISRO. And eventually, it will be the Indian private sector that will drive the space program. This aspiration requires meticulous execution on the part of both the government and industry players. For now, what matters is the narrative. The narrative that the Indian industry will drive the space program has been established. This narrative will encourage the Indian industry to:

• invest more in R&D;
• develop new downstream digital services on the spine of the extant information technology industry;
• be an industry that serves the Indian space program but has umbilical deep into the global space market, and
• Moreover, become indispensable to extant global private space giants like Boeing, SpaceX, Airbus, Energia, and CASC.

Business media will enforce more outstanding analyses of the workings of the Indian space program. Such investigations were previously shrouded, as the space program was only accountable to one stakeholder: the government. The ecosystem will become vibrant and competitive with the addition of multiple stakeholders. The competition will ensure rigorous innovation and invention, enabling competitors to stay ahead in the domestic and global space game. This means more skilled domestic jobs for scientists, engineers, technicians, analysts, business developers, managers, IT professionals, and academicians. There's no need to unroll the sleeves! There's a lot to do.

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