The many challenges for ISRO: Rise of startups, launch setbacks, attrition

What is the attrition situation at ISRO?

A July 14 Department of Space memo, signed by a joint secretary with the Union government, addressed “a spate of requests for voluntary retirement and resignation from Group A scientific technical personnel of ISRO including those associated with the prestigious Gaganyaan and other important missions/projects severely impacting implementation of projects of national importance.”

The memorandum said requests for voluntary retirement and resignations by scientific and technical staff associated with the Gaganyaan and other important projects “must not be accepted as a matter of routine” but should be sent to the Department of Space with the recommendations of centre or unit heads for final decisions.

While ISRO has not denied or substantiated media reports of the exit of more than 100 personnel from the organisation over the last year, many serving and former scientists The Indian Express spoke to this week said the exits are “over exaggerated” and “not alarming” in the context of ISRO’s 60-year history as a pioneer of indigenous, cutting-edge space technology.

“I don’t think it is so alarming. It happens sometimes due to various reasons. It is blown out of proportion. The unusual memo from the department only made it look so alarming,” said Dr P V Venkitakrishnan, former scientist and ex-director of ISRO’s Capacity Building Programme Office, which handholds private firms looking to participate in the tough space sector.

“Now there is a private aerospace boom. It would have stopped and stabilised even without the department memo,” said Dr Venkitakrishnan, who serves as an advisor for the Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos — which will soon demonstrate a “reusable” first stage in a second mission for its small satellite launcher Agnibaan.

Agnikul’s Agnibaan rocket. X/@AgnikulCosmos

A serving senior scientist at ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre — one of 22 ISRO centres in the country — where there has reportedly been a high rate of attrition, also said that exits from the organisation were “not alarming”.

The former ISRO scientist Tapan Misra said on social media recently that he had seen three waves of exodus from ISRO over a 37-year career. The first wave in the late 1980s saw engineers go to the Gulf countries for highly paid jobs in oil rigs, the second wave in the early 1990s saw exits to join the emerging satcom and telecom industry, and the biggest outflow was in the late 1990s and early 2000s to the information technology (IT) industry.

“The latest is the exodus for the startup ecosystem which is creating a huge hullabaloo among ISROites,” Misra wrote in his post.

An analysis of the ISRO headcount from data in annual reports over the last three decades shows that ISRO’s current sanctioned strength vis-a-vis available employees is at 72% — which is the lowest in recent times, with the previous low being 76% in 2013-14 — while 2017-18 saw an all time peak of 95% of the 16,902 positions being filled.

What are the reasons for the current wave of attrition at ISRO?

“A lot of small satellite manufacturing and launch start-ups have come so the exits may be corresponding to this area. I don’t know whether people who have left were working on Gaganyaan modules and its technologies. If there is unpredictability in a project they might leave,” a former top ISRO scientist who retired last year said. “It is mostly the youngsters with around 10-12  years experience who are leaving.”

Among the top scientists who are reported to have left in recent times are a senior engineer with 13 years’ experience at ISRO’s satellite centre — this person was key in the successful Chandrayaan 3 robotic moon landing mission in 2023 — and a veteran rocket scientist who headed a key rocket unit and was at the helm of two LVM3 heavy rocket launches last year.

Several of the founders and early employees of space startups that have emerged in India since 2018 are also former young ISRO scientists.

Pawan Kumar Chandana, 35, and Naga Bharath Daka, 35, the founders of India’s first space sector start-up unicorn (Rs 1.1 billion valuation), Skyroot Aerospace, joined ISRO from their IIT Kharagpur and Madras campuses, respectively, in 2012 before leaving in 2018 to be early movers in the emerging space sector.

Vikram-1, India’s first private rocket, lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, on Saturday, July 18. X/Skyroot Aerospace

Chandana has said several times since the successful July 18 launch of India’s first private orbital rocket, Vikram-1, that his decision to leave ISRO and start his own company in 2018 was a marriage of his two passions of entrepreneurship and rocket science.

Chandana worked on ISRO’s heavy-lift GSLV Mk-III rocket — the human-rated version of which is intended to be used for the Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission — and the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). He was awarded two innovation prizes during his brief stint at ISRO.

Another satellite launch start-up, Astrobase, which is located in Bengaluru, was founded in 2024 by Devakumar Thammisetty, who worked as an ISRO rocket scientist for 13 years. Two former ISRO scientists, Pawan Kumar and Prashant Mundotia, who worked for over 12 years and seven years respectively at ISRO in the area of mission design and structures are also part of the technical team at Astrobase.

The monetary benefits at venture capital-funded space startups in India are three to five times that of ISRO salaries and this is a source of attraction for young scientists who are not inspired by work at ISRO, a former scientist said.

Chandana has stated that his starting salary at ISRO was Rs 40,000 in 2012, which was lower than entry-level salaries for IIT graduates in private enterprises in other sectors.

Having an experienced scientist from ISRO on board at startups is also seen as providing heft to the start-up while seeking funding, said a former ISRO scientist.

What can ISRO do to fix its attrition situation?

During India’s IT boom in the early 2000s, many scientists and engineers from top strategic institutes were attracted to the exciting prospects on offer at emerging private companies that are now behemoths.

One of the engineers who found himself at the crossroads in 2004 was a then 46-year-old ISRO engineer, Dr M Annadurai, who later went on to become the project director of ISRO’s first moon mission (Chandrayaan-1) in 2008 and the program director for the Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan) in 2013.

Dr Annadurai recalls that he was torn between accepting “a good offer” from the private sector and staying back at ISRO. An indication by the top management at ISRO of the possibility of him getting a “once in a lifetime opportunity” of a lead role in India’s first moon mission clinched his decision to stay back.

“So what exactly happened was that ISRO leaders at the time Dr Rangan (K Kasturirangan) and Madhavan Nair (G Madhavan Nair) inspired me to stay on,” Dr Annadurai recalled.

“When Madhavan Nair asked me to stay on, I had another offer in Bengaluru which was much more remunerative than the ISRO salary. But when he offered me the Chandrayaan opportunity, then even my family felt it is better for me to stay with ISRO because money will come one day or another,” said the former director of ISRO’s satellite centre, who is now an adviser to the Tamil Nadu government and on the board of several science start-ups.

“As a result of an inspiring mission, I stayed on in ISRO in 2004 as I was told that I was getting a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’. This is the need of the hour now as well, to inspire people. This happened with the Mangalyaan mission in 2013 and Chandrayaan 3 in 2018, too,” he said.

Have recent ISRO failures and slowdown of key projects played a role?

One of the things that some former ISRO scientists admit is that the two recent back-to-back failures of ISRO’s workhorse PSLV rocket has resulted in a low ebb for morale. No ISRO launches have been conducted since the second failure of the PSLV C62 mission on January 12, 2026, as against a planned seven-to-eight missions for the current year.

ISRO’s third-stage problem.

Delays in realisation of the human spaceflight Gaganyaan project timelines — which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, in 2018, ambitiously set for 2022 to mark 75 years of Independence — has had some impact as well. But ISRO is also only one successful launch away from regaining its swagger, say current and former scientists.

“There are two sides to the coin when there are top priority missions. The exact same thing happened during the Chandrayaan period also. The priority was given for the Chandrayaan mission and there were lots of complaints from other project directors that their projects were getting affected,” Dr M Annadurai said.

“But in such a situation, you should not hold on to resources for a long time. The same thing happened in the Mangalyaan mission. This means that you cannot wait for a decade when it comes to such missions like Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan or Gaganyaan,” he said.

“But now what is happening is that even people working on Gaganyaan are looking to leave because they are not sure they will see the completion of the project in their lifetime — they feel they are not going to see the launch, that should not happen,” he pointed out.

While ISRO started out in 2018 with a 2022 deadline to get the Gaganyaan project going, a more cautionary note has been struck in recent years, with the safety of the astronauts taking priority since 2023 and more test launches planned before a real human space flight.

Though the launch schedule for the G1 flight — the first unmanned test flight for the Gaganyaan mission — is now scheduled for the third quarter of 2026, there are indications that it could be further delayed. A slide presented by ISRO chairman V Narayanan at a recent talk in Bengaluru indicated a 2027 timeline for the G1 test flight.

“For G1, the chairman has formed an internal high-level committee and they have been reviewing the full thing. The G1 launch was originally scheduled somewhere in September-October 2025, then January 2026, now it is shifting to the end of 2026,” said a former top ISRO scientist who retired last year and is familiar with the Gaganyaan developments.

“The LVM3 human-rated rocket for the G1 mission was ready long ago — it has been more than two years in waiting. Only the crew module, orbital module, and things like the abort systems where there is software, avionics — it is still work in progress,” the scientist said.

The former top scientist said that ISRO was exercising caution with the Gaganyaan project because “we don’t want to burn our hands especially after two PSLV failures. Everybody wants to be extremely careful.”

The back-to-back failures of the PSLV C61 and 62 in May 2025 and January 2026 are not directly linked to the Gaganyaan mission which involves the heavy-lift LVM3 (GSLV Mk III) rocket, but ISRO has decided that “unless you solve the PSLV problem then nothing else can take off”.

“We need to understand the reasons for failure. Unless we understand if there is a similar module that is sitting in the GSLV Mk III it cannot progress,” the former top scientist said.

What is fuelling the emergence of space startups in India?

According to a reply in Parliament on July 23 by Union Minister Jitendra Singh, the number of space startups in India has grown from one in 2014 to 400 in 2026. Private funding has also expanded from $100.5 million in 2021-22 to $618.5 million by March 31, 2026.

The impetus was provided by the government’s formulation of a new space policy in 2023 and the creation of agencies such as New Space India Ltd to commercialise ISRO technology through the private sector.

The key propellant over the last three years, however, has been the emergence of a global market for small satellites and their launchers as the race for low Earth orbit (LEO) heats up. LEO is the preferred orbital band for satellites meant for communications as well as Earth observation and imaging because its proximity to Earth helps reduce signal latency.

“It is very easy for ISRO to launch satellites, but we have decided that rather than ISRO doing it we will have the private sector coming in owning the satellites, operating them and monetising these satellites,” Pawan Goenka, the chairman of INSPACe, the space authorisation agency for India, said at a space business forum in Bengaluru in 2024.

Among the slew of startups that have emerged in the space sector apart from Skyroot Aerospace and  Agnikul Cosmos are Astrobase, Pixxel, Bellatrix Aerospace, Dhruva Space and Digantara, which are operating either in the areas of building or launching small satellites.

One of the distinguishing factors of start-ups like Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul Cosmos is their ability to provide on-demand small satellite launch services — two days instead of months.

Dr Annadurai said: “There will be less reliance on bigger launch vehicles in the coming days. In this market, India will play a major role and US companies are also interested…”

There is much room for growth though. India’s share of the global space market is less than 2% (it was valued at $ 8 billion in 2023). “The small satellite launch market is 70% to 80% global,” said Skyroot’s Chandana after the Vikram-1 launch.

The government’s space policy aims to take the Indian space economy from this $8 billion valuation to $44 billion by 2033.

Does the emergence of private players in the space sector undermine ISRO?

Not necessarily. While private players can provide services in the space sector, they are not in a position to build the kind of infrastructure ISRO has built, said the top ISRO rocket scientist who retired last year. “This sector requires a very huge infrastructure investment. People like Skyroot will not be able to do so unless they come out with a consortium,” he said.

Satellite constellations — networks of thousands of small satellites working together in orbit — frequently need to be replenished with new satellites. This is where small launch vehicles by private companies can step in.

“If ISRO keeps doing these small launches then its research and development — which is a key focus of the space agency — will get blunted. These missions will be routine — like a Uber or Ola ride on demand in a city, they will keep happening,” Dr Annadurai said. “Someone has to do the research and development for new propulsion systems, applications, and lunar missions, Mars, Solar missions which have their own longer timelines.”

For that, ISRO will remain the premier agency to research and develop cutting-edge technologies to keep the space sector in sync with the developed world.

According to Dr Venkitakrishnan, ISRO will be lean and only high-end research focused, after routine production is transferred to industries. “It’s a planned move. I don’t see anything wrong in what is happening now. We need to see the space sector and business of the nation as a whole,” he said. “If we need to capture the emerging opportunity in the small satellite, LEO market, private players have to emerge.”