Team Indus eyes $40 million fund for Moon mission

BENGALURU: Team Indus, the private initiative to land a rover on the Moon, is looking to raise $40 million through a mix of corporate sponsorship and crowdfunding before its scheduled lunar rover mission launch in December.

The aerospace startup, which has been financially backed by a host of bigwigs including Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, and Accel Partners' Subrata Mitra and Shekhar Kirani, has raised $20 million so far in equity funding and another $20 million in payload partnerships (for carrying third-party payloads in the spacecraft).

Founded in 2011 by IIT Delhi alumnus Rahul Narayan, Team Indus is part of the Google Lunar XPrize competition to land a privately-funded rover on the Moon by December. It will carry 11 payloads in the space craft along with its own rover. The spacecraft and rover are under construction at the government's National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL). The final assembly of the rover and spacecraft will happen at the Team Indus facility in North Bengaluru.

"Our spacecraft structure is ready. The software and the mission command centre is up and running and is undergoing testing. This mission is challenging. ISRO's Chandrayaan 1 was an orbital mission, while our spacecraft has to land on the Moon," said Narayan.

He, however, noted that the company could take some liberties because the mission is a short, landing-focused one. The flight testing of the spacecraft and payloads will happen next month at ISRO's facility.

Team Indus is 130-members strong and is looking to emerge as a key private satellite building and space mission management company. "By 2020, ISRO is set to employ a private launch vehicle. Not much is spoken about the organisation's effort to encourage private players. We see ourselves augmenting ISRO's capacities, not capabilities," Narayan said.

Team Indus is supported by companies including Tata Communications, L&T Engineering and Sasken, as also many current and former ISRO scientists. "We have also built strong relationships with the space agencies of France, Japan and UAE," Narayan said.