Best Place To BuildSrinath Ravichandran, Co-Founder & CEO, AgniKul Cosmos| "Is Rocket Science Really That Hard?"| Ep.20
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
75 min read · 15,313 words- 0:00 – 1:20
Introduction
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
all rocket companies are simply providing transportation. It's a very complex cargo vehicle. All my bosses in Wall Street were very rich. They used to go sailing, right? And they used to tell me, "You always put up the sails. Wait for the wind. But if your sails are not up, you'll lose the opportunity." What comes out of a 3D printer is a fully made rocket. This is a processor that wants to take itself to orbit. "Hey, but you know what it needs? An engine. Oh, but the engine needs some fuel." So it is that approach. [upbeat music]
- UHUnknown Host
Hi, my name is Amrit. We've heard that IIT Madras is the best place to build. [upbeat music] So we've come down to the Sudha and Shankar Innovation Hub. We want to meet some people. These are builders. We want to talk to them about their work and also ask them, "What makes IIT Madras the best place to build?" [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the Best Place to Build podcast. This is Amrit. I'm sitting with Srinath, the co-founder and CEO of AgniKul, one of India's top rocket companies. Well, there are only a few, so one of India's first private rocket companies. Um, and, uh, yeah, hello and welcome, Srinath.
- 1:20 – 2:53
Understanding Rocket Science
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Thank you.
- UHUnknown Host
Um, I want to start by saying, have you heard of the saying, "This is not rocket science"? Um, I want to understand, is rocket science really that hard? And, um, maybe using that segue, you can tell us what rocket- what rockets really are and what it takes to build a rocket.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So it's a great question because I think that phrase was coined at a point in time where access to computational resources was lesser, access to communicating just across teams was harder, and so on, right? So it's not... It is very hard, but it's not hard in the sense of the engineering itself being hard. It's about that last bit of detail. Every single thing has to be right. So that is the hard part, actually. So think of it like you're writing an exam where it's a digital outcome, right? Unless you get all the answers right, you fail.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That's what makes it hard, is because otherwise the tech-- Like, people have figured out enough tech on the ground to say that, "Okay, you can have a few sensors work, you can do some controlled flight." You can do all of those things. It's not hard today. In the past, even that was hard because just getting a computer was hard, right?
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But today, those things are all sorted. Today, the real hard thing is, can you make something work every single time-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... perfectly?
- UHUnknown Host
Because if you don't, then it'll explode, and everybody will get to see it. [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
If not explode, at least you won't be able to start your launch. That's what happened-
- UHUnknown Host
Oh, sure. Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... with our launch today.
- UHUnknown Host
So, uh, no, so let's talk about that. So, um, you're the co-founder and CEO of AgniKul. Can you tell us what AgniKul does?
- 2:53 – 3:43
The Evolution of Satellites
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So AgniKul builds rockets that take small satellites to space, right? So satellites have completely changed in the last twenty years or so. Uh, they used to be flying very far away. They used to be big in size and few in number.
- UHUnknown Host
So can you just put the numbers here? So, uh, when you say small, big, what does that mean? So when you say near, far, what does that mean?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So far is GEO, or geostationary orbit, thirty-six thousand kilometers away. Near is three sixty kilometers away, a hundred times closer.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Uh, size-wise, what used to be five tons has now become five- fifty to five hundred kg, so one-tenth reduction. And quantum-wise, one satellite or five satellites or ten satellites becoming thousand. So literally orders of magnitude change everywhere, right? So that's, that's the satellite
- 3:43 – 8:57
Challenges in Rocket Engineering
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
story. Rockets, all said and done, are simply transportation systems, right? So they were built for those kind of missions. Few mis- few satellites, far away, they'll operate forever, fifteen, twenty years. That is how things used to be in the past. Then somewhere along the line, electronics changed that whole industry. People figured with much smaller sizes, much lighter things, you can get stuff done. The only problem was, if you're very far away, you need powerful transponders, because from thirty-six thousand kilometers, talking to anyone on the surface of the planet was very hard. Then someone figured you can bring that also smaller if you make the satellite come closer. So satellites started coming closer. The only problem was, if you come really close, then you're going around very, very fast.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
You're not sort of hovering around, right? This whole geostationary thing, the word stationary is because at that height, thirty-six thousand kilometers, you are sync with Earth's rotation. But when you come closer, you're actually zipping through very fast. The average pass you get is five minutes.
- UHUnknown Host
So give me some, uh, like, this International Space Station is at what height?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It's, like, some four hundred kilometers or so.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay, so it's actually spinning quite fast.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, it's very fast. It's like ninety minutes is one orbit.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Right? So that ninety minutes sort of a timeframe is good because you get all that speed, latency part is sorted. You have very light systems that can take care of you there. Only problem is, you're not always on one place.
- UHUnknown Host
Right.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So what people figured is, "I'll put multiple of them," and they do this sort of relay.
- UHUnknown Host
Like a Starlink system.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah.
- UHUnknown Host
So the Starlink system is at what height?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Same. All four hundred, five hundred kilometers-
- UHUnknown Host
Four hundred
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... same. Everyone is in now, that's the class of orbits called LEO.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Low Earth orbit, right? And it's, it's really close. It's like Chennai, Bangalore, in upper direction, that's all.
- UHUnknown Host
[chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That's right. It's, it's incredibly close. Like, thirty-six thousand kilometer is meaningfully far away. That's like space. LEO is... Yeah, it's like, yeah, you, you call it space because sky is black from, [chuckles] if you look at it there. But other than that, for all practical purposes, it is just one step away from surface of Earth.
- UHUnknown Host
And at four hundred kilometers, um, say, and we're recording this in the week of Sunita Williams' return to, uh, the world, [chuckles] Earth. Uh, how many times would that rotate around the Earth in one go?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It's ninety minutes per orbit-
- UHUnknown Host
Okay
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... so roughly fifteen, sixteen orbits a day.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... right, it's just, you're just, just pushing that limit around that fourteen, fifteen. Usually they say for meaningful passes, you get 13. So anyway, coming to your question, so all that has happened in satellites, and rockets, we're still stuck in the past when for those older missions. Because rockets are not only about electronics. Rockets had engines, they had tanks, they had all these other mechanical systems where we didn't see that kind of a breakthrough, right? What you saw in the semiconductor industry didn't happen in any other industry in the last twenty, thirty years. So rockets are still stuck in the past. So this is where we come in and say, "We'll build rockets that are meant for small satellites, that are meant for satellites of today." Because every parameter that a satellite operator looks at has changed, except the way in which they go to space. Why should that alone be stuck in the past? So that's where we come.
- UHUnknown Host
Understood. So, um, and, and you make a rocket, which, uh, what is the payload on the rockets that-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
We can go up to three hundred, three fifty kgs. Depends on the launchpad, depends on the orbit, but in that range.
- UHUnknown Host
So is that going to be one satellite, or is that going to be a few satellites? How will that be?
- 8:57 – 9:32
The Rise of Private Space Companies
- UHUnknown Host
Now, I understand that, um, space was forever like a government initiative. There was NASA, ISRO, ESA, and all these, uh, and Japan's, uh, space research. And, um, it's become privatized over time. So maybe you can also give us a context of the space industry, how it's evolved, um, especially in the last ten years. I think it's moved a lot.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, yeah. So everything was done only by governments or have big private companies which had big stakes from the inputs from the government and so on, until SpaceX came by. I mean, they also got a lot of support from the government, but at least they really operated like a startup,
- 9:32 – 21:33
SpaceX's Impact on the Industry
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
really operated like a, you know, fresh venture. And the best thing that, you know, SpaceX did was start putting out metrics where it will start looking like a commoditized thing. Right before, like, the cost of a launch was a big $10 million, some tens of millions of dollars of number or $100 million number, right? Coming up with a metric to say dollars per kg, rupees per kg, these kind of things suddenly start making it look like a business where you're selling something, and then you can just scale it by kg. Even though it's a bit of an oversimplification, and today that's a... At least in the industry, it's, uh, people have just latched on to the concept of dollars per kg, right? Even though that's not the full picture, but it's easy to say, "Oh, you wanna go to space? Okay, for per kg, you give me $10,000." And that's, that commoditization, you know, impression that SpaceX gave was the biggest contribution of SpaceX from a story and a narrative standpoint. So a lot of people started coming in because there seemed to be more visibility on pricing. Before, it was like two, you know, big corporations, highly illiquid, no transparency, nothing was known about the pricing of it. And there was also this whole thing that you can't fail if you're in space. So in the name of putting higher quality products, pricing was jacked up tens of orders of magnitude, literally like 100x. The same screw will be $10 versus $1,000 just because it's a space-rated screw, even though really, from a mechanical properties standpoint, nothing would be different. So all this is what SpaceX built, and so that changed everything. And then everyone started, uh, you know, started looking at it like, "Oh, okay, you can also run it like a regular business." And with that, more entrants started to come in, and slowly an ecosystem started to form. So I think that is where the, the real change happened, right? Now you can look at space as one of those sectors, now I'm starting to use all the finance jargon, [chuckles] right? As a sector where you can do something, add value, and make money, as opposed to it being like, "Okay, there is one government grant you will get, or one government project you will get." It is that kind of a- it was a very government-centric, uh, you know, sector, which has now completely become... You can't completely keep governments away, but now that has become a lot more... You can think of it like running another transportation business.
- UHUnknown Host
Hmm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Rockets are, or all rocket companies are simply providing transportation. It is a, it's a, it's a very complex cargo vehicle. That's all a rocket is.
- UHUnknown Host
Understood. It's also a very quick cargo vehicle.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, it is. [chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
So, [chuckles] so Chennai to Bangalore takes, like, eight hours on a good day, door to door. How long does it take to get to space?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... uh, so from Chennai, from wherever we are, like, say, for our example, Agnikul's launchpad in Sriharikota, to get to low Earth orbit would be eight minutes, ten minutes maybe. And then after that is when the hard pa- the, the, the, the really amazing part starts. So to be in orbit, all you need to do is go really fast. It is, uh, it is literally, th- if you think of what a rocket does, it just pushes something, it could be cargo, people, whatever is on the rocket, at the speed of seven kilometer per second, and keeps it horizontal to the surface of Earth. So when-
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, I re-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
- it tries to fall, you never hit Earth, that's all.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, I remember the JE escape velocity-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah
- UHUnknown Host
... calculation.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct, correct. Same, same story. So all we are trying to do is push something really fast-
- UHUnknown Host
Okay
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... so that when it falls, it will never hit Earth, because Earth would have curved away. You would have remembered that problem-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... where if you start throwing a stone fast enough, it'll start landing further and further out.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And if you really throw it fast, it will start falling down, but by then, Earth would have curved, right?
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So let's say that is exactly what a satellite is. The question is how fast you can put something.
- UHUnknown Host
And then you were saying that after that, the magic starts. So what is the-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
The, the real magic about getting something to space is, okay, you, once you release your satellite there, it stays there. Actually, there are very little, uh, I would say, obstacles in space. The problem is the first 10 kilometers, right? So once you get to space, you can do a lot of things. You can maneuver, you can rotate. It's like this, this most-- It's the purest form of stu- It's like, you know, how we study in textbooks about motion, right? Equations of motion.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Something rotates, it'll keep rotating. Something you push it, it'll keep going in that direction. It's like there's no-
- UHUnknown Host
There's no air friction. There's-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Exactly. There is no... All these other forces from other bodies and so on are like second, third order of magnitude impact. So it's like the purest way to st- this is like how we actually studied in, uh, fifth grade, sixth grade, you know, equations of motion. You'll see all that there. So it is very easy to maintain a satellite after it gets to space. This first thing, actually, even in this journey of 500 kilometers, first 15, 20 are... In fact, first 10 is the hardest part. So if you look at a launch, like you, because SpaceX put out all these videos, you can see it on any of their launches. People actually applaud at four points. Okay?
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
First is lift-off. Basically, not hit the tower that's next to the launch vehicle. Next is this point where you call max Q, where the rocket is most vulnerable, because you're going very fast, but you're also in dense atmosphere. So it's a little bit like, you know, uh, jumping into a pool of water from a very high height, right? Where even water can hurt you, right? So that sort of a thing, where your rocket is still, it's well within atmosphere, but it's going so fast that air can actually break you.
- UHUnknown Host
What is the word you used? Max-
- 21:33 – 25:11
India's Space Policy Transformation
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yes.
- UHUnknown Host
So and, and I, I know you have spoken about it extensively elsewhere also, but why don't you tell us once again what the India story part of that is?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So the India story, uh, for a way... So ISRO has been working with private players for a really long time, right? Uh, but they were all vendors to ISRO. If you're a private company building something in space tech, your end customer is ISRO, and it'll be for a government mission. And this was there, I think thirty, forty years, this has been the norm, right? ISRO doesn't do everything in-house. In fact, they actually have built entire industries to take the technology they have developed and scale it outside, but they'll be providing solutions only to ISRO. So now, very recently, after COVID, that thing changed because there was a stance taken by the government that we are so ahead as a country in space, but we are literally among the lowest of the lowest in terms of percentage of actual commercial business going in space. That was because the sector was closed. Only finally, everyone is doing work only for the government, and that you can only scale so much, right? So that is where the policy itself was changed. A new body was created to authorize private space missions. It's called InSpace, right? And for actually allowing for, you know, people to say, "Okay, if you want a private launch, you can do that. If you want a private launchpad, you can do that. If you want to put a completely private satellite mission, like what Starlink is, you can do that." Before, it was like, "No, India means you supply stuff, but it'll be for ISRO." So that is the big change. So now people are starting to come more and more.
- UHUnknown Host
Did you see it coming? Did you see InSpace coming?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Not at all.
- UHUnknown Host
Well, it was a shock.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It was a big shock. Was very positive shock, [chuckles] actually.
- UHUnknown Host
[chuckles] It's, uh-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It was very bleak, uh-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... times in COVID when soon it was announced, right? So, so literally, like, I think May of, uh, 2020, I remember the day also very vividly. It was, like, two, three days after my birthday. [chuckles] I remember this, the finance minister came and announced all the programs for, uh, Atmanirbhar, automo- uh, you know, the automo-
- UHUnknown Host
Which year was this?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
2020. May of 2020.
- UHUnknown Host
Pandemic year.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Pandemic year, right. It was actually among the Atmanirbhar initiatives that was announced, right? So we saw s- like, I don't know if you remember this, it was like a presentation board where we had a... It's all in the, in YouTube, it was all, this is what was being telecast by the government itself. Like, you had the finance minister, uh, uh, Nirmala Sitharaman Ji, and then on this side, it was like a slideshow. Sector after sector used to come. We had automotive, agriculture, energy, and out of the blue, the last but one slide was space. And we saw that government is going to do a lot of things to allow for private player participation. So that-
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... that was the big change, and they actually kept their word to it. So this is-
- UHUnknown Host
This is, uh, I, I have a few questions. One is that, first of all, in startup journeys, such kind of good news doesn't-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah
- UHUnknown Host
... happen often, right?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah.
- UHUnknown Host
Like, we- I worked with FinTechs before, where-... RBI will [chuckles] do a press release. We heard more of the other days in news.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct.
- UHUnknown Host
Entire business is gone.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct.
- UHUnknown Host
Uh, but this is like, uh, I mean, of course, you started your company before.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, yeah. We started in December '27.
- UHUnknown Host
Long was that in an area, in a, in a time when you didn't know whether you would launch on your own, and then this came as a good surprise.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct. Correct. So we-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- 25:11 – 28:21
ISRO's Success Factors
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Very much. Very much.
- UHUnknown Host
The other question that I wanted to ask is: can you explain to me, I've always wondered, India has had many government, part-government organizations over the years, and ISRO has been spectacularly successful, but not everyone has been, and I don't want to name them or whatever. Um, what was so special about ISRO that it just succeeded so much?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
I think three things in my understanding. One, it's actually a sector-driven thing. Generally, people get into the sector because there's some fascination for space. You don't see that happening in any other sector, government or private. It's generally not so passion-driven, right?
- UHUnknown Host
Right. Right.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
I think the top passion- It's, it's a, you're either motivated by money or something else, which is not a bad thing. I'm just saying that passion keeps you going through other ups and downs. Like, even if other things are not aligned with you, you're still okay. That's one. The second thing is always being cash-constrained, right? ISRO has operated on shoestring budgets since ever. And-
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, I remember there's, uh, videos of, uh-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Mm
- UHUnknown Host
... things being ca- carried on bullock carts.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct. Correct.
- UHUnknown Host
That's actually a very striking image [chuckles] of a rocket on bullock cart.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And there is a view that that was about a vibration test being done. It was not only a transportation thing.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay. [laughing]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
I don't know the truth, actually, but I've heard that it is not just a... They didn't take it on a bullock cart because they didn't have a truck. We had trucks and all.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That level it was not bad, but that's actually the smart thing of ISRO, right? They used it to test vibration also.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And then, anyway, so-
- UHUnknown Host
Obvious
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... I, I don't know if it's true, but that is one, one of the stories that gets- that's the other side of the coin for that bullock cart meme. But the point is, because they were always cashed up, innovation was always in the forefront. You didn't just get the money that others had. It was never a equal play as far as the global space sector is concerned. And the third one is very much about the way it was managed. It was directly under the Prime Minister's portfolio.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So you had less bureaucracy generally, right? It was cutting through so many layers of bureaucracy. So because, and even till date, nuclear energy stuff and space tech stuff is rolling up closer to the Prime Minister than any other ministry. So beyond, uh, complaining about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, it made decision-making more, you know, direct.
- UHUnknown Host
Right.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
You only had the Space Commission, and that was completely coming under the Prime Minister. So the topmost decision-maker was involved in policy, right? So it made things move faster in that sense. Even though the sector and the technology was generally a slow thing, at least you were not, uh, confused in terms of governance.
- UHUnknown Host
Nice. Do you think that there was also a nationalism play, in the sense that you are very motivated because you're doing something for the nation, and, uh-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That's definitely there. I think that always comes along with space. Generally it is, but it is not as nationalistic as, say, defense, for example.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But space is there. Yeah, of course.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
We, we always- We can't take that-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- 28:21 – 31:51
Agni's Technological Innovations
- UHUnknown Host
this. And, [chuckles] um, I want to understand, uh, uh, in the press release and the, in the, in the commentary that came after, there were a lot of firsts, so, and, and including the engine. I want to understand the technology a little better. What were the firsts, and why is it important?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Sure. So, uh, just to give you perspective before I list out the technologies, right? So we knew we had to build small rockets.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And the problem with building small rockets is not engineering, it's about economics. Because any engineering problem, the efficiencies and the numbers work out better in terms of, you know, unit economics once you start talking lo- about large systems. So just think about it this way: for 60 years, people had built large rockets, and everything had been squeezed out in terms of efficiency out of it. If you take a model like that and apply it to a small rocket, it's going to blow up in cost. None of those technologies were meant for doing small systems.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, and this is played out across different technologies. Like, for instance, uh, we know to build big dams. Smaller dams, not as efficient.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Exactly.
- UHUnknown Host
We know to build jet engines, but micro engines, not as efficient.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Exactly.
- UHUnknown Host
Uh, yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It's, it's uniform. You're exactly right. So it's across the, across technology, you generally get economies of scale working for you, right? So for us, when we started AgniKul, the idea was, can we figure out technologies that work in a meaningful way from pricing at a smaller scale? So that's where the, you know, search started. So, for example, this 3D-printed engines that, you know, about AgniKul, at least that gets spoken about quite a bit.
- UHUnknown Host
So your, your, your rocket was called Agni- AgniMan-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
AgniMan
- UHUnknown Host
... Sorted.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Sorted.
- UHUnknown Host
The mission was called Sorted, and the, and the engine is called AgniLight.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
AgniLight, yes. Correct. Correct. So AgniMan's-- Actually, AgniMan is the name of a commercial vehicle. AgniMan Sorted is the name of this test vehicle, because it was a tech demonstrator, and some orbital tech demonstrator. That's the Sorted part. So AgniMan Sorted, of course, was meant to say that the tech is also sorted with this.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And the mission was actually called Mission 01. Nothing, no nothing more fancy than that. Uh, and the engine that was powering it was called AgniLight. Interesting thing about that engine is it's single-piece, 3D-printed, meaning-... it's an automated way of making a rocket engine. So you just stand back and watch the 3D printer build an engine. And the reasons that technology was used was because only then at small scale you can get meaningful numbers to work. So if you have a metric, uh, like, say, a dollar spent to make- to get one newton of thrust, right? Dollars per newton. That was like, if you use the same technology that is used for a bigger rocket engine, our engine would be 10X pricier. Dollars per newton would be 10X more, even though the dollar itself may be small. So that won't work at a small scale, so we had to think of 3D printing. So every technology that I'm gonna tell you as a first, was driven by that core module-
- UHUnknown Host
Idea
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... that, yeah. What will work economically at this scale? This is very... You know, it was very focused about getting the cost low with technology, not with like, "Oh, we are in India, it's cheaper." Or you are in India, it doesn't mean space is cheaper, right? It's just not a sector like that. So you learn to figure out tech though, and that's actually what ISRO has done in a lot of its missions. ISRO's missions are cheaper, not because it's from India. It's because we thought about something that probably in the West people didn't think about.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So coming to the first-
- UHUnknown Host
And that's coming, that's coming from a place where you are anyway constrained, so you're forced to-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Innovate
- UHUnknown Host
... innovate.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
There's no other way out. If you had to have a successful space agency, then the only way out is to figure out [chuckles] how it will work at lower cost.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- 31:51 – 31:55
3D Printing in Rocketry
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So now coming to AgniKul's first, so one is a 3D-printed rocket engine.
- UHUnknown Host
Can I just spend
- 31:55 – 36:42
Additive Manufacturing Explained
- UHUnknown Host
some time on that? Uh, a 3D-printed rocket engine is cheaper than, say, a-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Conventionally made one.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm, engine. Why?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Because, uh, uh, the- in the making of a rocket engine, you're removing the entire human element out of the story, right? So we figured out when you're making a complex geometry, you can use additive manufacturing or 3D printing, because it'll allow you to come up with, like, these shapes and paths for the fuel to flow in ways where you can't even think of in conventional. Because in conventional-
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, so, so in co- in conventional manufacturing, you're removing material-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
You're removing material
- UHUnknown Host
... and, uh, complex geometric shapes, you may not be able to remove material in that.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, because it's hidden inside, for example, right? Like, with conventional, it's always like you, you, you're starting off from something and you're cutting out, which means there is no concept of something that is embedded inside a part. Like, if there is a particular, say, this cup. Inside the cup, what is there within the walls of the cup? I can't make it, actually, unless I shave off a layer, etch whatever I want, and then add one more layer on it-
- UHUnknown Host
And then weld it maybe.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Weld it, yeah.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So all of those-
- UHUnknown Host
I think this is an easier concept to understand. Anybody who has cut paper, even with a scissor, knows that if you want to get a complex shape, you have to move your, uh, you know, your tool in very complex ways.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct, correct.
- UHUnknown Host
Right.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So here it is literally like you don't even cut, you only create. That's the way the word additive manufacturing is a nicely coined term, because it's almost as if it feels like you're creating what you want, nothing.
- UHUnknown Host
It's interesting you said that, because whenever I hear the word additive manufacturing, it implies that everything else is [chuckles] reductive manufacturing. That word doesn't exist.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct, correct.
- UHUnknown Host
But-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Actually, this qua- We actually have a, a, section in our manufacturing facility, which we call subtractive manufacturing.
- UHUnknown Host
Subtractive manufacturing. [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Reductive feels like you're deleting.
- UHUnknown Host
[chuckles] Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Subtractive, it's like, okay, it's just one more, one, one more aspect of algebra, right? But it is subtractive in the sense that you take a block-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... and you shave out what you want.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So you're removing. Additive is like you start from nothing, and you create only what you want.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So that allows you to play with geometry. Like, it's like, literally, like just sketching with a pen, right? You can do whatever you want. But then, of course, you will have to make sure there is material strength, there is integrity, there is homogeneity across layers.
- 36:42 – 37:15
The Future of Space Technology
- UHUnknown Host
possible, the machines that are required, how old are they? Like, when did that technology ma- mature?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So it has been there for about ten years, 15 years now, but I think people are constantly pushing boundaries in terms of how big you can ... So before, 3D-printed parts could be, like, this big.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It was not very useful, but it was, like, a nice way to start testing stuff, right?
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But from there, the moment you start pushing your limit in terms of how big your structure can be, more and more things can be done. It's a 20-year-old, 20, 25-year-old industry, if you start about from very beginning aspects of it.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And plastic versus metal is a huge fork in this road.
- 37:15 – 38:18
Challenges in Metal Manufacturing
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
In plastic, people went very far, very quickly with, uh, additive manufacturing, plastic additive manufacturing. But metal additive manufacturing took more time. First of all, it's a more expensive story. Second, metals also demand a lot more heat-
- UHUnknown Host
... Anschließend.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, heat, it also route more power, a lot more, uh, understanding of the material science.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Because you're, like, for example, with what approach we use, it's called direct metal, uh, laser sintering, where you're literally putting a layer of powder, welding what you want. Powder layer, welding what you want. It's like a laser beam is actually creating that, it's drawing that structure for you, right? So you are welding only. It's like layered welding, actually. So when you do that, the parts are actually good in this plane, but it's not homogeneous in strength in this plane. So you do heat treatment so that all the molecules actually normalize in this aspect as well.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So there's a lot of that post-processing work that had to be figured. Today, that's well understood, but that's why it took 20 years for the-
- UHUnknown Host
Industry
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... industry to mature.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm. Uh,
- 38:18 – 38:28
First 3D Printed Rocket Engine
- UHUnknown Host
amazing. So the first thing that, the first, first, uh, was, uh, the world's first 3D-printed rocket engine. Uh, congratulations on that! And, uh, you're going to give us a list, so
- 38:28 – 39:13
Innovative Rocket Software
- UHUnknown Host
please.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, so the next one was actually the way in which we run our software. So one thing that's interesting about our rockets is, the rocket can be built, uh, uh, you know, in a plug-and-play format, right? So we thought of a very electronic-centric approach to rocket building. So generally, if you think of a rocket, uh, in the past, right, you had these tanks, you had these engines, and the code that was written in the vehicle was, like, bare enough code to start the engine, stop the engine, throttle the engine. It was like, it was like an add-on. It was like, "Oh, I can't control the rocket, so let us write some basic code to make sure these things, there's a sequence that is executed." We actually thought about it in a completely different way, where we thought there is a computer that wants to fly itself to space,
- 39:13 – 41:30
Plug and Play Rocket Components
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
right? Let an engine be an add-on. It's like a peripheral. Like, you wanna attach a printer to your computer, you put it on a USB, right? So if you want to attach a camera to your computer, you just connect it. Similarly, an engine should just be an add-on. So the entire soft- so it is actually from a electronic standpoint, this is a processor that wants to take itself to orbit. "Hey, but you know what? It needs an engine. Oh, but the engine needs some fuel." So it is that approach. So every device in the vehicle is a peripheral to the flight computer.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And the plug-and-play nature of that sort of an approach helped us keep our vehicle modular. So what we ... The, the first here is that at least as far as India is concerned, this entire rocket was built on an operating system, Linux-based operating system-
- UHUnknown Host
Mm
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... real-time operating system, where every application, when you think of flying to a particular point, uh, you will have to throttle, for example, you will have to maneuver your, your vehicle, for example. All these are like apps.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
There is an app to control your engine. There is an app to tell you where you are in or where your journey. There is an app to tell you how to throttle your engine, and this is running on an operating system.
- UHUnknown Host
So when you're saying app, you, you don't mean an Android app, you mean like in your-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It means a very similar concept, actually.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But it is running on the vehicle itself, as opposed to, like, just running one very long-
- UHUnknown Host
Sure
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... code.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay, okay, okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Where everything is just one mess, and you can't touch anything because everything is integrated like that. Here, it was like, "Let's first build a platform." So we have an something called an AgniKul OS, an operating system that runs on the vehicle, and on that operating system, for every rocket application, there is a separate code. That's the app.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So for example, for communicating to telemetry, where we have to send data back, there is an app.
- UHUnknown Host
So this also means that once you modularize it like this, each, each app, app can have its own life and can have its own versions and-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Exactly. But the whole- whatever the software industry is in, why are we not using that here?
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah, fair enough.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So that is, that was other new things. So in India, I think SpaceX does a version on this, so we just went all in on that. We just- I mean, at least from my electronic background or something, I love the idea that, you know, the whole, whole rocket is, you can think of it like, "Oh, I have an OS, and then I can upgrade anything I want, move anything I want without tou- touching the core structure."
- 41:30 – 43:01
Ethernet in Rocket Systems
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
The third one was how these, uh, again, a very electronic-centered thing, where our ... So there are various computers within- uh, there are various systems within the vehicle, as I told you, right? Like the equivalent of a printer and a camera and all these things. These are all connected on Inter- Ethernet for us. So Ethernet is a really cool protocol because-
- UHUnknown Host
Mm
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... lot of communication-related thing have been figured out to a lo- a large extent, right? Ethernet is a very well-understood protocol today to do with Ethernet.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And it allows you to- it allows two computers to talk with very little hardware in between them. You don't have these bulky cables. You have seen the Ethernet cable?
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That's it. Eight-core cable, six-core cable, that's all you're looking at, and these really thin wires, and you're transmitting hundreds of MB of data. So it suddenly made, like, an engine computer and a flight computer talk to each other at Mbps-level speeds with maybe half a kg of wire.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So that made the rocket low. So this was a necessity for a small rocket, because only at that scale will your dollars per kg work out. So this is where I said the search came from, what is the lightest wire to use?... right? The lightest wire to use in terms of protocol was Ethernet wires. Oh, then okay, then this computer and this computer had to talk through Ethernet, and then you make it work with Ether. So that was again, a new thing. It's the first time we flew with, uh, flight computer. So if you think of it from a networking engineer standpoint, like if a Cisco guy [chuckles] looked at it, it would be like a network is flying.
- 43:01 – 44:14
Mobile Launchpad Innovation
- UHUnknown Host
Nice.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So that was one more thing. And then from a policy standpoint, the first launch from a mobile launchpad into India, right? So the whole launchpad was first built in IIT, [chuckles] and then from IIT it was- so people from ISRO and InSpace came and saw it.
- UHUnknown Host
So I'll just, just, just clarify here, IIT Madras, right?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, IIT Madras. [chuckles] Yeah, Thayur Campus of IIT Madras. So it was built there, qualified there, and after all that, disassembled-
- UHUnknown Host
Oh
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... packaged, taken to Sriharikota, where we were allocated space by ISRO, reassembled there and launched. So and that was an important factor for us because at scale, when you're looking commercially, taking advantage of which latitude you launch from makes a lot of difference. Pricing-wise ... So what do you lose on economies of scale, you gain in latitude, right? So we wanted to make sure that when we go and ask another launchpad, wherever it is, we are not asking for, "Yeah, build me this big building, invest this two thousand crores, then only we'll come and launch." "No, you give us empty space, we'll figure it out." So that was the other first. So yeah, these are some of the things.
- UHUnknown Host
Oh, that's pretty cool. So if a cu- customer says, "I want to launch from this location," you can just
- 44:14 – 44:54
Customer-Centric Launch Solutions
- UHUnknown Host
do that?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah. Actually, we solve for that as an output. So for us, the, the way it works is, "Tell me the mass that you want to put in space. Tell me the orbit you want to get to." I will tell you which is a lo- it is like a location versus pricing. This latitude, this pricing, this latitude, this pricing. Then you add on paperwork and other logistics and say which works for you. Because as a customer, I mean, uh, when I'm talking to a customer, I may not know his or her, you know, complexities in-
- UHUnknown Host
His business
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
-the satellite.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So I can- the best I can do is like, "Here is a table, this location, this cost, this location, this cost." Then you decide. Of course, the on the top of the table will be the latitude with the lowest costs.
- 44:54 – 45:40
Core Technologies and Mentorship
- UHUnknown Host
So all these things that you're talking about, ev- uh, and, and just pulling from a thread from earlier, even if you are not launching the vehicle yourself, these are all technologies that can be used by ISRO or somebody else.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Very much, very much. Yeah, these, these are like the co- All we have done is make sure that it's at this scale it works. That is what has taken an enormous amount of new technology development. Because, uh, like Professor Satya, who has been our, you know, varying mentor for like since the first day, day minus 20 [chuckles] or something. He was there before the company started. Rockets have been flying forever. 1960, we put one of our kind on another body. That's, like, amazing, right? So what is new? Now, what are you going to come in 60 years later do in rocketry that has not been figured out there? Cost.
- UHUnknown Host
Very
- 45:40 – 49:16
Evolution of Rocketry
- UHUnknown Host
nice. I mean, uh, I think the first rocket, g- the first vehicle that's considered a rocket is the V-2, uh, rocket built by the Germans.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah.
- UHUnknown Host
And, uh, what I remember from that is that if you wanted it to land here, it would land somewhere in the next ten-kilometer kind of vicinity. Very, very inaccurate, very unpredictable. Might blast on the launch site itself, and from there, we've come so far.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Very far.
- UHUnknown Host
I just noticed on your website that your tagline is: "Launch anywhere, anytime, affordably."
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yep.
- UHUnknown Host
I just want to say that this feels like three taglines.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
[chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
And each of them, anywhere, anytime, affordable, sounds equally challenging, right? So which of these is the hardest, and, and honestly, which of them are most important from a customer point of view?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Actually, all three. Uh, but, uh, at least today, they're struggling a lot with anytime. Uh, because pricing, SpaceX is able to offer something, at least in today's market, it's low, so that is okay. So affordably part is relatively okay, let us say. Anytime is ... So you can go to actually a website, uh, rideshare.spacex.com, and you can't believe the way to which they have commercialized that, right? You can go to rideshare.spacex.com, enter the satellite mass, and enter, uh, I think, uh, the altitude or something, and, uh, no, the type of orbit you want to go to, and you can go all the way to the end, where they'll tell you the date, and the credit card number entry point will come.
- UHUnknown Host
Nice. It's like a Calendly invite.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah. [chuckles] So, uh, and it's like, it'll be similar. It'll be a $5 million. I don't know who has credit cards to pay for $5 million- [chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
[chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... but, but it is possible to that level. So but, uh, in that whole process-
- UHUnknown Host
I would say that-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That-
- UHUnknown Host
I would say that Jeff Bezos definitely has. [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
One click, uh?
- UHUnknown Host
[chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, SpaceX doesn't do one click yet. But anyway, the point is, uh, the timeline for that would be like today. I, I was recently checking, like, two to three weeks ago, 27Q2. That's when it is available.
- UHUnknown Host
Oh, shit!
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So that anytime is like not, not time, basically. [chuckles] It's not even there. So that's one. Anywhere actually is a concept that people are not able to fully appreciate yet today, because people are not even thinking about it like that. I have two launch pads, one in Florida, one in California. I launch from there. Four. How does it matter anywhere? What is the pricing? So I, I do like this: so dollars per kg is this very well-understood number in the industry, because SpaceX talks about that a lot. So we came up with all these other dollars per numbers. Dollars per degree of latitude correction, dollars per degree of ori- orbital inclination-
- UHUnknown Host
Just give me an idea, from the cheapest dollar per, uh, kg to the most expensive dollar per kg, from a latitude perspective, what is the difference?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Latitude alone would about 40% of the price.
- UHUnknown Host
Oh.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
You can literally double your price if you're choosing the wrong location. It's like fighting tailwind, right? So Earth's spin is felt the most at the equator. It's not felt at the pole. So if you're launching from the equator for an orbit that's looking like a longitude, like pole-to-pole orbit, then you're initially actually having a lot of eastward velocity.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And in flight, you're canceling that. So you're taking a lot of extra fuel with you to cancel Earth's rotation.... it can also work in your favor. If you're actually doing something where your orbit is close to equatorial, Earth has done 20% of the- not 20, 14% of your problem has been solved by Earth. So that really depends. That's why, for us it is like, let us at least allow for that as a parameter in pricing. It's not all dollars per kg, per k- yeah, kg matters, but kg is only one part of the story.
- UHUnknown Host
Understood. Very nice. So launch anywhere, anytime, affordably. Um, I think your first commercial launch is not yet done. It's coming soon, I guess.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, this year.
- 49:16 – 50:42
Team Dynamics and Experience
- UHUnknown Host
And, uh, actually, let's talk about your team first. How did you meet your co-founders? What is your team like? What is your average age? Uh, I'm curious to know.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Average age, yeah, I'm probably one of the people pushing the average on the other side [chuckles] of, of, uh, 30. Uh, average age, yeah, would be twenty-six, twenty-seven.
- UHUnknown Host
But isn't this an area where the employees would require a lot of experience?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So we augment that with, uh, people fr- retired from ISRO.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So the idea is to make sure that we don't do the mistakes that ISRO has done, but at the same time, always have fresh thinking. Because this problem has never been solved before in this manner, right? So you need someone who's not an insider, actually. Because otherwise, you're so shackled by the failures of the past or the burdens of the past, right? You need no baggage to think completely... In fact, it's better if you don't know all the problems.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure, you need a little bit of arrogance-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah
- UHUnknown Host
... uh, ignorance.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Ignorance.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Ignorance, yes. Uh, being naive is actually good in a way, that you don't know all- what, what is the magnitude of the challenge you're really up against. That helps, right? So that has usually worked, and of course, all the 18-hour days are not gonna be possible with [chuckles] only experienced people. We need a healthy hybrid of this and that.
- UHUnknown Host
Eighteen to five is night here, by the way, [chuckles] just for the camera.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
We work six days a week.
- UHUnknown Host
Shit! [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Well, it's not 18 every week, every, every day of the month.
- UHUnknown Host
Right.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But yeah. So that is one thing, and then the, uh... You know, so that's, that's, that's how the
- 50:42 – 52:11
Founding Story and Early Challenges
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
team is made up, and then the founding team itself. So it's me and, uh, my other co-founder, his name is Moin. So Moin and I, the best way to think of us is, like, we used to play cricket together. That's how it is, and we had very different career paths before we were both unhappy with what we were doing and ended up starting AgniKul. Then, of course, the reason why we are a part of the IIT Madras ecosystem is Professor Sathya Chakravarthy. Among the hundred cold calls we made, he was the one person who said-
- UHUnknown Host
This is a story you've said many times, and Moin has also said it, that I guess the story is, like, you, you mailed a lot of professors.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Primarily, it was anyone having access to a facility to test the rocket system. So with whatever-
- UHUnknown Host
What did the mail say?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Said, like, that we have an idea to build a rocket. We see that you have a facility where I can test an engine or a tank or whatever, some electronics. Can I work in your lab?
- UHUnknown Host
Hmm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That was- I mean, that is the crudest form of the email. Just imagine some ChatGPT around that language.
- UHUnknown Host
No, but I'm just thinking, that is not an email that professors would be getting often. [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So most of them thought it's spam.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Most of them, most of them thought it was too un- too unrealistic to mount as a project.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But Professor Sathya being Professor Sathya, was like, "Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. I- you want to build this rocket? No, no, this is not gonna work. I'll tell you four other ways to build it."
- UHUnknown Host
That is true. In our interview with Professor Sathya, it felt like he has already thought of everything till the next 10 years. And most likely, you go and tell him something, he'll be like: "Oh, yeah, I thought of this in 2015. Let's start."
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, very, very, uh, very lucky. Again, I, again, it's like, hundred-
- 52:11 – 54:45
Importance of Perseverance
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
the only thing that I think we should take credit for is not stopping when the 70th no came.
- UHUnknown Host
Hmm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
He might have been the 75th person [chuckles] we met, right? So... And because this is like, meeting him was, like, the best thing that happened in terms of, you know, actually making this a real project.
- UHUnknown Host
I wonder if he still replies to all his emails, because-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
He-
- UHUnknown Host
... he becomes so busy, right?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But he does. He's actually- he always replies more to cold emails than to the people who regularly works. [chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
Uh, okay, so, um, so your co-founder is Moin. You met on, you were playing cricket together. What about the rest of your team? How does it look?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So next was Perumal sir, who is actually, like, the, the father of India's GSLV rocket. So that came through Professor Sathya. So he happened to know, uh, Perumal sir from their own, you know, previous ISRO interactions. And Perumal sir is awesome because he's 40 years of ISRO, and he's not at all biased against any new technology, which is very hard. Like, I've personally, myself, find myself a little more pessimistic about rockets [chuckles] generally than compared to eight years ago-
- UHUnknown Host
Hmm
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... because I have learned a few things hard way. But he's one of those people who's like: "Yeah, that's there, but yeah, go build. If you wanna go build it, build it." That kind of a person. And through him, a lot of ISRO retired people came in. Then the other thing was the actual full-time people. So we started off with interns, uh, and, you know, master's and BSc students at Sathya's labs.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And then slowly, that we were able to offer, you know, people, uh, you know, full-time placements or something when we started raising some money, and that's how it started.
- UHUnknown Host
Fair enough. We pulled from the ecosystem first, and then maybe-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
I think-
- UHUnknown Host
... as your reputation grew, you pulled.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It's all... I, I think finding the right people is always a hard challenge. It could be AgniKul, it could be, I don't know, Swiggy, it could be Zepto, [chuckles] or what else is it to name any other company, completely other sector, right? Hard, uh, good, committed people who are sincere about what they do.
- UHUnknown Host
And also who are doing something that's not been done before. Because, um, I guess that first-principles thinking kind of requires, uh, a kind of education, a kind of thinking, a kind of, uh, self-confidence, um, a kind of, uh, almost bordering arrogance, right? Like, um, "I can do this on my own." Like, "I have... I know," even though you may not, you've never done it before. You need to believe that you can do it on your own.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, I think a lot of people that we worked with actually started off by just liking the fact that they have not done this before and seeing where it goes, right? The 3D printing part was like that. No one thought we could make a single-piece rocket engine except Professor Sathya.
- 54:45 – 57:25
Diverse Backgrounds and Skills
- UHUnknown Host
How does, uh-... how does, um, [chuckles] your team handle the stress of a launch? And, uh, [chuckles] countdown must be quite stressful, right? And a- also because, like, you, you called off the countdown, like-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Three times.
- UHUnknown Host
Three times.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, countdown is, it's, it's meant to create anxiety, right? If you simply say 10 to zero for something, [chuckles] you'll get anxious. It could even be cutting for a birthday cake. So- [laughing] See, uh, the, the history of countdowns is that, you know, a lot of systems had to come together in one, one timing. So someone in the US or somewhere, I don't know where it started, they figured out this concept of we'll have a timer, and the timer ticks down to a point, and at that point- and at every point, you're synchronizing teams. That is why the countdown... Like, why should you have a countdown in the first place? First principles way, [chuckles] it is because you're syncing very different teams on the same timeline. That's all it is.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But then in our, in- well, it adds anxiety just the way it is set up. It is meant to create that in a way. Then the question was for us, because of all the aborts that happened, there was so many questions. It is like a big inquiry that happens after an abort. It's like: "Why did you abort? Why did you come to the... Why did you say okay to launch if you knew this was a problem? Why will this not happen again?" So that was very challenging. Beyond a certain point, it just became like this, um, you know, it was just like this thing in self-sustaining mode. It's like, "Okay, we had a problem. We'll fix it. We'll justify why it did not come and attempt again." So that's how many times it-
- UHUnknown Host
Okay, okay. You're saying that because you've done it so many times, it becomes-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, after some point, the, that race also becomes a little like: "Okay, I know this will happen. Now what?" Like, that it becomes a... We did it three times, right? So the third time was like, by that time, we already knew what is the story.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah, it reminds me of, uh, JEE coaching, where your, uh, professors will give you so many exams that-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
By the time you're there, yeah, it almost looks like I know, up to this part, I know what is the story. [chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah. As long as nobody says 10, [chuckles] nine, eight.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And there was this, uh... So one of the books that I- I mean, I'm, I, I, I got a lot of passion for space by reading Arthur C. Clarke, and I think there is this one of his books where he talks about space elevators. And there he-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... actually, uh, talks about, uh, this particular phrase, where he's, like, gone are the d- so they, they, in the end of the book, uh, I don't know if it's a spoiler, it has been around, [chuckles] book has been around for a while, but the end of the book, they do make a space elevator that goes to orbit, right? Now, that not, that goes high enough to be the space. And he talks about this one line where he says, "Gone are the days of these, you know, nerve-wracking moments of a countdown," uh, where, you know, humankind finally did not need the anxiety to come out of the shackles of gravity.
- UHUnknown Host
Mm.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Somehow that stuck to me very early on, uh, but that-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... this countdown is a setup to create anxiety.
- 57:25 – 1:11:20
Storytelling and Communication
- UHUnknown Host
I want to just comment that throughout our conversation, there's been some really lovely storytelling from you. [chuckles] Also, I think Agnibaan Sorted is a very clever naming. So this is a- it's a engineering company which does a very hard engineering problem, and, uh, I've, I've heard you speak elsewhere. You're a great storyteller. Uh, and, uh-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Thank you
- UHUnknown Host
... and I, I noticed that you've done film school. [chuckles] Yeah. Can you tell us through how that happened?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, so I was in, uh, New York doing something on Wall Street, and-
- UHUnknown Host
Can, can you go through that story first? How did you... You were an electrical engineer.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Electrical engineering. So I wanted to do aerospace always-
- UHUnknown Host
Mm
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... but then I think, uh, family, friends, no one advised me to do a course where after that you'll not get a job.
- UHUnknown Host
Sure.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That was the, [chuckles] that was the opinion of aerospace engineering in 2000.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah, correct, correct. Fair, because, uh, because at the time, maybe Boeing, Airbus, that's it.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
That's it. And in India, it was like, if you don't get into ISRO or DRDO, you're over. And you'll have to do something else there. My, you know, extended family was, you know, advising me a lot, and I- they were telling me that, "See, w- if you wanted to anyway do some other engineering, why don't you study that? At least you'll have a leg up. Why do aerospace engineering then come back to, say, software? Just do software if that's where you're going to get a job." But I-
- UHUnknown Host
So you went to electrical?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
I went into electrical because I used to... I, I, I like tinkering with, you know, that kind of code that runs on processors and electrical stuff. And then I got into ABB, the electrical engineering company, and worked for two years, and that was a lot of commissioning-focused role, where I had to take their motors and put it on seal plans and so on. It was, like, where I was installing the systems. And the checklist that ABB has, or actually, this is a European thing, I think, to have such a detailed checklist. If you just follow the step one by one, it'll work. You don't need to think, you don't need to talk. Have a manual, go through it step by step, at the end, it will work. A mo- very complex motor control system will work. It was good, but it was also not challenging enough from a design standpoint. And that's when I... And all my friends from college were doing something in finance. It was almost like I was doing the worst possible [chuckles] thing by do- not doing finance, right? That this was how 2006 was-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
... 2006, 2008. So then I came-
- UHUnknown Host
But it's fair. Uh, I mean, I graduated at the same time, and, uh, the, the- if you want to be an engineer, the available exciting engineering jobs were fewer.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Correct. Very true. In India, it was actually non-existent, not fewer and all. I'll be very clear. [chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
Uh, when I, when I sat for placements, there were only two companies I was interested in. I don't, I don't know if ABB came, but I was only interested in 3M and GM.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Mm.
- UHUnknown Host
And, uh, you know, whatever, like, it wasn't that, that many options.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, and it... All the core R&D was still not done in India at that time.
- UHUnknown Host
That is true. So you felt like the, the engineering units of the, the design-
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Design unit
- UHUnknown Host
... units outside India were outsourcing their least exciting jobs to the design units in India.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yes, least. So a lot of scenario analysis kind of, uh, given in-
- UHUnknown Host
And this is the story that Swapnil also told me once. Swapnil, the CTO of Aether, he said when he joined his firm, he was doing some simulation of design work that was done outside.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Elsewhere. That is a norm. Even today, I think a lot of that happens.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But of course, now we have a lot of original design happening in India, right? So-
- 1:11:20 – 1:13:59
Balancing Work and Family
- UHUnknown Host
different experience, uh, and my question to our dads, how do you manage dad duty and CEO duty?
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, it's very difficult. I think it's harder than anything I do in AgniKul, [chuckles] particularly as my son grows up. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old now. So the only question is, you need a support system, right? So you, you, you, you need to have... At least for me, again, luckily, we were able to start AgniKul in Chennai. So my parents live- we don't live in the same house, but we- my parents are in the same area, my wife's parents are in the same area, and so on. So try to balance that out. And other thing is, in all your activities that you do on Saturdays or whenever, Sundays, when you're not working, you involve your son also. [chuckles] That is, uh, he has all my hobbies now because I involve him in every activity that is not AgniKul. That is my only shortcut that I've figured. Reasonably works, so like, I- the storytelling, all these things, right? So I, I- and of course, kids are the best storytellers.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
So involving him in that allows me to unwind and also spend time with him, so-
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
It's n- I've not been very good at that in terms of balancing.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
But I either do this well or, or AgniKul well, and then somehow sandwich.
- UHUnknown Host
But you have a good support system.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Yeah, support system. Without that, it's not possible. I think it's- you need that, and for me, it was again, lucky that parents, uh, both the parents are here.
- UHUnknown Host
Yeah. I'm just thinking of your son, and I'm thinking that when he goes to school and somebody asks: "Okay, what do your parents do?"
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
[chuckles]
- UHUnknown Host
He's gonna be saying, "My dad flies rockets." [chuckles] Everybody's going to think it's a story.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
And he was there at the launch, so ISRO was nice enough to allow, uh, you know, him also into- and him, and actually my mother going for, who found the boy, and his kids also were inside. And they were very matter-of-fact about it, "Right, okay, launch happened." Next, first question, the first person who asked me when is the next launch is my son.
- UHUnknown Host
Hmm. It's funny because kids imagine that their parents, whatever their parents are doing, everybody's parents are doing [chuckles] the same thing. It's right. So I'm sure at some point he'll be thinking: "Yeah, my, my friend's parents also launch rockets. What else is there to do?" [chuckles]
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
True.
- UHUnknown Host
Okay, this is great. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us. Um, really appreciate it. Uh, we are recording on a Sunday morning, so we're taking away his dad time for this, and, uh, appreciate it again. Thank you so much.
- SRSrinath Ravichandran
Thank you, Ambu. Thank you for having me. [outtro music]
Episode duration: 1:13:59
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode rmdjGO7ykxk
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome