Team Indus ropes in Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani as advisor and investor

BENGALURU: Nearly two years after launching an ambitious bid to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, aerospace startup Team Indus has roped in Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani as an investor and adviser.

Team Indus, India's lone entrant to the prestigious $30-million Google Lunar XPrize, is set to close a pre-series A funding round of nearly $1.5 million (about Rs 9 crore) from investors, including Nilekani. It has received backing also from Sasken Communication founder Rajiv Mody and HCL founder Ajai Chowdhry in this round.

Nilekani's involvement in the project comes at a crucial time for Team Indus. The Bengaluru-based team, attempting to create history by producing the first such space mission from India, is racing against time to meet a deadline of December 31, 2016 to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon.

"I find their vision very bold and adventurous and wish them all the best in their amazing goal! I am very happy to be a small part of their mission," Nilekani said in a text message, without disclosing how much he has invested in the startup.

Nilekani, after unsuccessfully contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha election as a Congress candidate, has been incubating ideas in primary education and reviving his government technology organisation, eGovernments Foundation. Team Indus is a rare instance of the Infosys co-founder getting involved as a strategic adviser in a startup in which he isn't sole or initial investor.

Team Indus, vying for honours at the Google Lunar XPrize along with 29 other global teams, raised about $500,000 in seed funding late last year and is now raising its second tranche of $1.5 million.

Overall, it needs about $30 million, including $20-25 million to book a launch slot with the Indian Space Research Organisation.

The team has to land a rover on the moon and send back mooncasts to Earth by December 2016 to win the Google Lunar XPrize, designed to inspire and help discover means for low-cost space transport.

In January, Team Indus was named one of three winners in a category for demonstrating robust hardware and software for landing systems. Each team won $1 million.

"We're looking to raise more funding in the coming months - over the next 6-12 months. There will be crowd funding as well," said Team Indus co-founder and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi alumnus Rahul Narayan.

"What makes it special is that so many people, including Nandan, Rajiv and Ajai, stood up and said ‘We're going to do something about making innovation come out of India'." Team Indus was originally formed with the idea of the moon mission, but along the way Narayan and others realised the potential of leveraging their innovations for future space missions and founded the startup.

Space missions in India are rarely attempted by individual teams of scientists and entrepreneurs and are mostly undertaken by space bodies affiliated to the government.

"I decided to invest in (Team Indus) not for economic returns, but because it's an extremely audacious project. It is an amazing feat that a team of scientists from India is landing a robot on the moon," said HCL founder Chowdhry.

Other investors participating in Team Indus' second round of fundraising are Ashish Gupta and Alok Goyal of Helion Ventures; Persistent Systems co-founder Anand Deshpande; serial entrepreneur Vishal Gondal; and Naveen Tewari, co-founder of InMobi.

Team Indus raised seed capital from a clutch of investors including Subrata Mitra and Shekhar Kirani of Accel Partners; Sharad Sharma, the founding member of software products thinktank iSpirt; Vivek Raghavan, chief product manager of UIDAI; and others.