NEW DELHI: Three private firms were on Wednesday selected to develop a modular and scalable small satellite bus, which houses various components of a spacecraft, as a product to the burgeoning space sector in the country, India’s space sector promoter IN-SPACe said.
The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) said it has selected Bengaluru-based Astrome Technologies Pvt Ltd and two Hyderabad-based firms -- Azista Industries Pvt Ltd and Dhruva Space Pvt Ltd -- under its 'Satellite Bus as a Service' (SBaaS) initiative.
Satellite bus is a platform that provides essential services to the payload and enables the mission objectives such as thermal management, power, communication, guidance, navigation and control, data processing, and propulsion.
Each selected company will receive a grant of Rs 5 crore to support the development and demonstration of a robust, modular and scalable small satellite bus.
The satellite buses developed under the SBaaS initiative will serve as a cost-effective platform to accommodate multiple hosted payloads, catering to both domestic and global market requirements, IN-SPACe said in a statement.
"By enabling indigenous satellite bus platforms and integrating them with India’s emerging small satellite launch capabilities, we are laying the foundation for India to become a preferred global destination for end-to-end small satellite manufacturing, launch, and hosted payload services," Pawan Kumar Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, said.
As per the Announcement of Opportunity guidelines, IN-SPACe will continue to support the selected companies through milestone-linked grant disbursement and by facilitating access to ISRO/DoS and IN-SPACe infrastructure, testing facilities, and technical expertise, as required.
In subsequent phases, IN-SPACe plans to enable hosted payload missions on these satellite bus platforms, further expanding public-private partnership-led programmes that allow the industry to scale from platform development to operational missions, the statement said.
"By providing standardized and flight-proven satellite bus platforms for hosted payload missions, IN-SPACe aims to reduce entry barriers for payload developers while strengthening domestic manufacturing capabilities and reinforcing India’s position in the rapidly growing global hosted payload services market," Rajeev Jyoti, Director of Technical Directorate, IN-SPACe, said.
A total of 15 proposals were received up to July 2025, and following a rigorous, transparent, and multi-stage evaluation process, three non-government entities were selected for the initiative, the statement said.