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'The launch of Nila, our very first satellite, was very emotional as well as nerve wracking.'
'We tried to calm ourselves by cracking some poor jokes!'
Private players entering the Indian space sector is a fairly new phenomenon.
It was in 2020 that IN-SPACe, an autonomous agency within the Department of Space, was established with the 'intention of promoting, enabling, authorising, and supervising space activities of non-governmental entities'.
Then in 2021, the Government of India launched the Indian Space Association (InSPA) to open the Indian space industry to private sectors and start-ups.
With this emerged some of the key private start-ups in the space sector like Skyroot Aerospace, Agnikul Cosmos , Takeme2space , OrbitAID, Dhruva Space, Pixxelspace, etc.
With the launch of the satellite Nila aboard SpaceX Transporter-13 on March 15, Thiruvanathapuram based HEX20 has joined the elite list of Indian space start-ups.
HEX20 is founded by five friends who are settled in different parts of the world: Aravind MB, Lloyd Jacob Lopez, Ashwin Chandran, Anurag Reghu and Amal Chandran.
Aravind MB, co-founder and director of HEX20, describes their journey so far to Rediff's Shobha Warrier.
Five friends from Kerala and the beginning of a space start-up
The five of us who are behind our space start-up are either connected through school or college.
The idea for a space start-up came from my engineering college classmate Amal Chandran who is a professor at a university in the US and settled there.
As you know, NASA has some major associations with various universities, and he was the program head for the university-NASA for SmallSat (small satellites) programme.
In 2018, he mentioned to us about starting such a SmallSat programme in Trivandrum. But the Indian space industry was not open to private players then.
He did foresee a market for private players in the Indian space sector.
The idea of making small satellites brought all five of us together in 2018-2019, and interestingly the germination started in Australia.
The target is the global market
We wanted to first gauge the market because we didn't want to invest so much money into an idea that would not work. It is not like an IT service industry. This is very capital intensive.
We were all working in different places, but we did the background study during our free time.
From the beginning, we did not restrict ourselves to any one market. The global market was our target.
Within the global market itself, it is the Asia Pacific region that we want to concentrate on.
The US and European markets are a bit saturated as there are quite a few players in the field.
But in the Asia Pacific region including India, the demand is so high with very few players to cater to the demand.
In the Asia Pacific region, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are starting to build space industries. Then, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan are heavily into space sector. I must include Australia also in the list.
This is where we see the potential market for the space industry.
The customers for the space industry are academia and product companies
We see that universities and colleges bring in people from diverse departments to build satellites for their needs.
This is where we come into the picture, building satellites.
Academia must have built the payload, the component which determines the character of the satellite; for example, transponder is the payload for a communication satellite, the camera is the payload for an earth observation satellite.
Even a scientific instrument can be the payload.
Payload alone is not the component of a satellite.
It requires a structure in which payload has to be put, it requires an onboard computer, it requires software, it requires power supply, it requires solar panel, it requires battery board, it requires an active determination control system for the orientation of the satellite, it needs to have a radio to communicate with the ground station.... All these things together make up a satellite.
So, academia may have a payload to be launched into space and after the launch, they want the data from the payload for their tests.
Academia's requirements are very diverse.
The two missions we have planned for this year are for a Taiwanese university.
One is a fibre optic gyroscope prepared by the students which they want to space-qualify so that they can commercialise it. Our role is helping them space-qualify it.
We also learnt that earth observation and scientific instruments are the other two areas where the maximum number of satellites would be used.
We found that a university or a college would start with a small satellite and not a heavy satellite.
The capital cost involved is so huge for a large satellite and it is just not possible for an academic institution to build large ones.
Small satellites are good enough for research institutions, technology demonstrations and in-orbit demonstrations.
So, our plan is to cater to this very large market out there first, and then maybe build large ones later.
Setting up the space lab at Techno Park in Thiruvananthapuram
Then the pandemic struck, and everything took a backseat.
Though the beginning was in Australia in 2020, we could incorporate our start-up in India only in 2021.
Because the covid period was not yet over, we didn't have any employees to start with.
In December 2022 we approached the Techno Park in Thiruvananthapuram and we became the first space start-up to have an office there.
2023 began with us getting our first employee in January.
And in March, our space lab was ready and we moved to the building in Techno Park that was named Nila.
Setting up the first ground station in Kerala
In November 2024, we got regulatory approval from INSPACe to start our own ground station (Satellite Control Centre) in Thiruvananthapuram.
And we became the first private company to get approval for a ground station in Kerala.
The ground station as the name suggests is on the ground, and it communicates with the satellites and the satellites communicate with it from space.
Naming the start-up HEX20
Though various names cropped up when we were looking for names for out start up, we thought HEX20 was the ideal name for our company as it had a global character to it.
Hexadecimal 20 is the ASCII code for the space between two characters.
As of now, HEX20 is a boot strapped company with all the capital coming from us company directors. We also re-invest profits.
We would look for investors now that the launch has happened as we feel it has brought credibility to our endeavour.
The first satellite is named Nila
Nila, as you know, is another name for Bharatapuzha.
Since we are based in Kerala, we wanted our first satellite to have a name that is rooted to Kerala. It also has to be easier for all our customers to pronounce.
Since our space lab is located in the building Nila, we thought Nila was the apt name for our first satellite too.
Nila is a nano satellite with the size of a bread loaf; 30cm in length, 10cm in width and 10cm in height.
It is a 3U (U for unit) SmallSat. A 3U nanosatellite(1 to 10kg) is a cube shaped satellite (10x10x30) weighing 1-10kg.
We plan to move from nanosatellites to a 30kg micro satellite(10 to 100kg) for our next launch this year aboard the PSLV rocket.
Decision to launch satellite Nila using Space X
The decision to launch Nila using Space X was not by choice but by force. SpaceX is 40% costlier than SSLV.
As there were no SSLV launches planned at this time, although we have MoUs with both Skyroot and Agnikul, we had to use SpaceX.
The vendor German space company -- Dcubed -- had been patiently waiting to space-qualify their product. So, we had no option but use SpaceX.
Launching Nila on March 15, 2025
The launch of Nila, our very first satellite, was very emotional as well as nerve wracking. We tried to calm ourselves by cracking some poor jokes!
All our employees had assembled even though it was a Saturday, and we watched the launch from our meeting room.
It was around noon that the launch happened. And ours was the first among the 74 satellites to get launched.
53 minutes after the rocket launch, Nila was put into orbit. Thus we became the first private satellite from India carrying another company's payload.
It was a huge sigh of relief for all of us when it happened.
On Sunday the 16th, we got the first signal from the satellite.
Future plans
We have three missions lined up for this year of which one would be from India and the rest from outside the country.
In fact, we would be exporting the satellites to them, and they would launch directly.
The space scene in India cannot be any better now that the government is encouraging private players to come in.
And the space market is really huge, and the possibilities available for entrepreneurs to explore are also huge.
I would say, the world is your market.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com