ISRO: Privatization triggers an unprecedented exodus
Over 100 scientists and engineers have quit the country’s prestigious national space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). For the moment, India’s space expanse appears pincered in a classic Catch-22 scenario.
By Ranjit Bhushan in Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during an interaction with CEOs and founders of 20 space start-ups on August 23, 2026,called upon the private sector in space research to build a global aura of innovation so that people worldwide feel that if they want to make a career, they should go to India.
The timing of this clarion call could not be starker. Over 100 scientists and engineers have quit the country’s prestigious national space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), headquartered in Bengaluru.
Insiders and media reports suggest that well over 100 exits – close to 120 – have taken place in recent months.
Most departures have come from two prestigious ISRO hubs, the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram. Senior figures like Victor Joseph, who headed the LVM3 rocket project for the Gaganyaan mission, have chosen to leave.
A vast majority of those who have quit for ‘greener’ pastures belonged to the URSC, thus named in 2018 to honour Professor Udupi Ramachandra Rao, a space science pioneer and the founding director of the centre. It is the lead ISRO centre responsible for the design, development, assembly, and integration of all Indian satellites.
The VSSC, christened after eminent scientist Dr Vikram Sarabhai, widely regarded as the founding father of the Indian space programme, is the main research and development centre for rocket and satellite launch vehicles.
Insiders say some key projects could be impacted because staff tied to flagship national efforts—including the crewed Gaganyaan mission, Chandrayaan-3, and LVM3 rocket development—have left. Notable departures include senior project heads and simulation experts.
The history of ISRO is chequered, to say the least. This space leader, which evolved from humble beginnings in 1969 to achieve historic lunar, Martian, and commercial milestones on a cost-effective budget, started in 1969 under the visionary leadership of Dr Vikram Sarabhai, aimed at building technology for national development.
India built Aryabhata, its first experimental satellite, in 1975 which was launched by the Soviet Union. In 1980, India successfully launched the Rohini satellite using its own SLV-3 rocket.
Since then, the country’s space programme has gone places. In 2013, Mangalyaan made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first in the world to succeed on its very first try.
A decade down the line in 2023, ISRO successfully landed a spacecraft, Chandrayaan, near the unexplored lunar South Pole at a remarkably low cost.
Last year, the SpaDeX mission demonstrated India's first space docking technology, joining an elite group of nations.
Such has been the scale of ISRO success over the last decades that it has literally narrowed the gap between local and global. Between 2015 and 2024, the ISRO launched nearly 400 foreign satellites for over 30 countries, earning hundreds of millions of dollars.
Despite its major global successes, ISRO has also faced notable launch vehicle and mission setbacks over its history, most recently experiencing back-to-back anomalies with its historically reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in 2025 and 2026.
The current kerfuffle, however, is not dictated by ISRO’s history. It has more to do with its privatization. That the global success of ISRO could potentially be undermined by these exits, has put the government in a quandary.
The Congress party criticized the Modi government for "strangulating and emasculating" ISRO amid the wave of scientist departures and a push for space sector privatization.
Congress leaders like Shashi Tharoor and Jairam Ramesh in particular have suggested that voluntary retirements could impact vital projects like Gaganyaan. “This has raised legitimate concerns given its capacities, capabilities, and competencies built up so methodically and painstakingly over the past six decades thanks to the vision, dedication, and leadership of Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, Brahm Prakash, UR Rao, APJ Abdul Kalam, and so many other distinguished scientists and technologists," Jairam Ramesh said on X.
The Congress leader claimed that the Modi government has an "aggressive privatisation agenda’’ for the space programme, as it had for nuclear energy.
The privatization that the Congress refers to is India's private space sector transformation. The country opened its space sector to private companies in 2020, shifting from a strict government-run model to a commercial ecosystem that welcomes individual innovation and manufacturing.
While the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (INSPAC) acts as a single-window regulator, it also helps private firms access ISRO testing facilities, launch pads, and data. It handles technology transfers from ISRO to private businesses and aggregates commercial demand for launches. This policy gives private entities full rights to build rockets, launch satellites, set up spaceports, and offer commercial space services.
The outcome of this privitization boost is best highlighted by trailblazing start-ups like Skyroot Aerospace, responsible for the historic maiden flight of Vikram-1, India’s first privately developed orbital rocket on July 18, 2026. It has put the spotlight on India’s first private space sector unicorn and its founders, Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka.
What started as an ambitious idea by Chandana and Daka, both former ISRO scientists in 2018, has now grown into India’s biggest private space success story. They had founded Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace in 2018 with the ambition of making satellite launches as routine and affordable as booking a commercial flight.
The founders now lead the company as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer respectively, overseeing a team of more than 1,000 professionals working across rocket design, propulsion, avionics and launch systems.
There is little doubt that this brave new world of private start-ups is the trigger for this ISRO migration. India now has over 400 space start-ups such as Skyroot Aerospace, Agnikul Cosmos or Pixxel, aimed at building hyperspectral Earth-observation satellites for real-time environmental monitoring.
To be sure, privatization comes with corporate carrots -- higher salaries, stock options, and faster decision-making, in addition to offering leadership roles much earlier than what staid government agencies can proffer.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in the Department of Atomic Energy of India, dismissed concerns over reports of the exodus, calling the departures routine administrative movement. He stated that resignations and retirements are normal in a massive organization like ISRO, noting that "many come and go" while young talent continues to join.
Such nonchalance is not evident in government actions, though.
If everything is hunky and dory, why is the government worried?
According to NDTV, the Department of Space issued a directive requiring all resignation and voluntary retirement requests for Group A personnel on critical missions to go through top-level central review.
Such directives are geared towards protecting flagship projects like Gaganyaan from sudden talent shortages. The exodus has reportedly impacted critical programmes, prompting the central government to tighten exit norms, though there is no official confirmation.
Former ISRO bosses are not too amused. They say that India’s space privatisation initiative undermines ISRO and transfers public assets to private entities. Ex-ISRO chairman, G. Madhavan Nair, told the media recently that giving the management and operation of launch centres to private companies is a mistake because private firms cannot replace a sovereign institution like the government. He went so far as calling the decision a “foolish’ one.
Nair’s comments came after Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) Chairman Pawan Goenka said ISRO would stop manufacturing launch vehicles, with their production to be taken up by the private sector or PSUs.
“ISRO will not make any launch vehicles and will not manufacture any launch vehicles. That will all be done by the private sector or PSU,” Goenka said while speaking at Business Today’s India @ 100 Economy Summit.
According to Madhavan Nair, industry has already been involved in the manufacture of launch vehicles for decades, and “around 90 per cent of the work” on rockets such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is currently done by them.
“The final assembly, integration, testing, and launching is done by ISRO. So that's the critical operation, and we cannot leave it to an industry who is not experienced or who does not have the expertise in the field,” he said.
The former ISRO boss puts in a testy poser: “If you want to create an establishment similar to ISRO, today it will cost something like Rs 50,000 crores. And the income from that will be hardly a few thousand crores. So which industry will come forward in making such a large investment with a very miniscule return?”
It’s a question that has no easy answers. While venture capital interest is rising, early-stage funding remains limited, making it difficult for start-ups to scale.
The lack of specialized educational institutions and courses in space technology hinders talent development. Only one Indian Institute of Space Technology (IIST) exists, creating the need for more institutions and industry-academia collaborations.
Nations like the US, China, and Russia have advanced space programmes, including reusable spacecraft, space tourism, and extensive satellite constellations. While there is no doubt that India is catching up, longer R&D cycles and limited high-end capabilities pose serious hurdles.
While India has developed launch capabilities, many start-ups still rely on foreign rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon-9 due to cost and schedule constraints.
Clearly, the way ahead is to expand domestic manufacturing of satellite components through a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for space-grade components, establish more IISTs and space-focused courses in IITs to build a skilled workforce, and strengthen bilateral agreements with leading space agencies -- American NASA and Russian Roscosmos.
Above all, there is an urgent need to enable start-ups to commercialize home-grown innovations. But that again, it is hampered by serious financial and resource crunch.
For the moment therefore, India’s space expanse appears pincered in a classic Catch-22 scenario.
Based in Delhi, Ranjit Bhushan is a seasoned journalist who has worked for over three decades across the mainstream English media, including in Outlook, The Times of India, The Indian Express, the Press Trust of India (PTI), Associated Press (AP), Financial Chronicle, and DNA. He is the author of ‘Maoism in India and Nepal’ .