Decoding Agnikul’s Cosmos Race With SpaceX On 3D-Printed Rocket Engine

Fourth country to achieve a soft-landing on the Moon. First to reach the lunar south pole. First to reach Mars orbit in its maiden attempt. This is where India shines in the deep, dark space. The race widened beyond the US, Europe and China, following India’s roaring entry into the space club in a rather respectable response to global jeers. 

As the roughly $350 Bn global space industry stays the course to exceed $1 Tn by 2040, the world’s fourth-largest economy gravitates towards a higher trajectory, powered by its flock of deeptech startups.  

What wooed the private players was the reforms in the Indian Space Policy 2023 that broke down the barriers, catalysing investor attention. And, Indian spacetech startups cornered around $157 Mn from investors last year, doubling over what they had raised in the previous year. 

What’s propelling this growth? The recent milestone touched by NASA with the success of Artemis II certainly added to the momentum on a global scale. On the home front, government policies backing Indian-made products and components, and rising push for commercialisation and wider participation are driving startups into the $13 Bn spacetech market, which is likely to grow twice as fast as the global industry from $13 Bn to $40 Bn by 2030. 

IIT Madras-incubated Agnikul Cosmos is counted among those leading the spacetech pack as the sector gears up to accumulate around $3.5 Bn of funding over the next five years. 

Agnikul focuses on affordable and flexible launches, achieved through 3D-printed rocket engines, with a focus on smaller rockets with a payload capacity of around half a tonne. It competes with the likes of Skyroot Aerospace and Dhruva Space in India’s spacetech market, expected to become the world’s third largest by 2030.

The company hit the headlines just a few weeks ago with the successful test-firing of its ‘Agnite’ engine. The move marked a global milestone as Agnite is not only India’s first semi-cryogenic engine, but also the largest 3D-printed single-piece rocket engine in the world. 

Rolled out in 2017, the company has so far raised over $78 Mn in funding from investors like Pi Ventures, LetsVenture, Artha Venture Fund, and 100X.VC. It closed a $17 Mn funding round last November at a valuation of around $500 Mn. While the company is yet to report its FY25 earnings, it incurred ₹43 Cr losses against a revenue of ₹9 Cr in the previous fiscal. 

Srinath Ravichandran, who founded Agnikul jointly with Moin SPM, was rather candid in an interaction with Inc42. “We want to do something that SpaceX is not able to offer, and do that with technology, not just by selling the India tag. An engineering-heavy product has to have differentiation at an engineering level to stay different and to add value. That is what our focus has been,” he said. 

For Ravichandran, the significance of these labels lies less in making headlines and more in how its achievements advance the bigger picture of Agnikul’s commercial and technological strategy. 

Not Rocket Science, Really…

The Agnite engine is a 1 Mt-long structure built using metal 3D printing by Incotel, a superalloy often used for aerospace manufacturing applications. The major innovation here lies in how the engine is constructed as a single piece, without requiring multiple components to be assembled by welding or with screws. While Agnikul had developed and tested an earlier version of this engine in 2024, the latest version is larger and better suited for commercial rocket launches. 

“We started with 3D printing engines because we wanted to reduce costs. The key premise of Agnikul’s approach has always been what are the best manufacturing and design techniques to use so that you can shrink a large engine to a smaller engine and still get the economics to work,” Ravichandran explained. “Unless you 3D print, you can’t make a single-piece engine. In conventional methods of manufacturing, you have to make multiple engine components and then fasten them together.” 

Beyond reducing manufacturing costs, Agnikul also realised that 3D printing offers several further advantages: reliability, speed, and agility. 3D printing minimises human involvement and reduces the risk of failure, while also enabling quick iteration in the design phase without needing to change the moulds or heavy fixtures. The single-piece structure also reduces the manufacturing timeline to a week, whereas building an engine conventionally takes months. 

As a semi-cryogenic engine, Agnite uses liquid propellant, which brings a major bonus – reusability. “Solid propellant rockets are a one-time use system that can’t be re-flown. Forget flying it, once you test it on the ground, you can’t fly that. You have to make another engine. We are able to fly the same hardware that was tested on the ground,” explained Ravichandran. 

“That gives a lot of comfort when we go to launch because when you see the rocket on the launch pad, none of that is new. Everything has been tested on the ground, already,” he said. 

Same Task, Just Doing It Differently… 

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Agnikul adopted a tried-and-tested approach. 

One example is the 3D printing process. Agnite is produced through a method called laser powder bed fusion, where a bed of metallic powder is heated by laser rays to create a layered solid structure. While the design for the engine is proprietary, the manufacturing process is a standard process. 

“These printers are commercially available. If you have $5-10 Mn, you can just buy one, but what took us a long time to figure out were the nuances of how to make a functional rocket engine out of it. For example, the power of the laser ray, de-powdering, distribution of heat – such parameters are proprietary,” Ravichandran said. 

The engine is constructed using Inconel, an alloy commonly used in aerospace for both 3D printing and conventional manufacturing. This was a strategic decision to avoid overextending their bandwidth by developing proprietary materials in the initial phase. 

“We didn’t want to get into metallurgy, but rather focus on building rockets. Once we have a functional rocket and start commercially flying it, we will have the bandwidth to ideate on metallurgy too.”

Even the fuel that the engine runs on is a Keralox formulation – a combination of liquid oxygen and kerosene. Given that regular aircraft also use Keralox-based jet fuel, this choice means that Agnikul’s engines run on a propellant combination that is a known quantity. It is familiar, relatively safe, and easily available in the market. 

“We didn’t want to be taking on the propellant supply chain as a risk. Otherwise, you’re going to be stuck with an explosive or a corrosive system or a hazardous chemical, and then the logistics of handling and transporting the propellant become a new nightmare to figure out,” Ravichandran said. 

… Set To Reach For The Stars

Everything about Agnikul’s approach to innovation is carefully calibrated around two key principles – cost and flexibility. The company’s USP centres around launches that prioritise customer flexibility. 

Where a commercial launch provider like SpaceX – the largest in the world today – might be dropping customers at fixed stops on a set schedule, Agnikul provides more end-to-end control over the parameters of the mission – from the timeline to the launch and drop-off location. 

“You beat SpaceX by doing something that they don’t do or are not able to offer. That is why we wanted to focus on the best way to build a small rocket. While competitors are building massive rockets with carrying capacities of 10 to 20 Tonnes, our technology is about the right set of tools to make small rockets viable and flexible,” Ravichandran said. 

“It’s not that our customers are flying as a piggyback rider on a bigger mission. End-to-end control over the mission is what will attract customers, and we are not charging a premium for that. We are still comparable to SpaceX’s pricing.” 

Agnikul’s strategic focus is an indication of how the industry is increasingly trending towards smaller satellites, which are more affordable to mass-manufacture. The company launched the Agnibaan Sub-Orbital Technology Demonstrator (SOrTeD) by pioneering India’s first semi-cryogenic engine powering a rocket launch and using the first private launch pad ‘Dhanush’.

Building rockets to carry smaller payloads and making them commercially viable, however, turned out to be a challenge. Hyderabad-based rival Skyroot is also taking a similar approach with a focus on catering to the small satellite market. The design standpoint of the Agnite rocket engine is perhaps the core differentiator between Agnikul and Skyroot’s Vikram rockets.

Agnikul’s strategy hinges on combining conventional wisdom with innovative design to seek the best route to enable affordable and flexible launches. Founder Ravichandran is upbeat on the formation of IN-SPACe (the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) of the government, providing a clear direction and policy framework for companies like Agnikul to grow.

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